
Class J3 133. 

Copyright N° ._ _ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



VEDANTA philosophy 



Divine Heritage of Man 



BY 

swAmi abhedananda 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE VEDANTA SOCIETY 

NEW YORK 



^$^ 

V 



THt LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

JUN 13 1903 

Copynght Entry 
CLASS a XXo. No. 

copy, b. 



Copyright, 1903, 

BY 

swAmi abhedAnanda. 



< * c « « t ' 



• • • .. • - 






Dedicated 

to the 

Beloved and Revered Memory 

of the 

BLESSED SWAM I VIVEKANANDA 

My Spiritual Brother and 

Fellow Disciple of 

bhagavAn sri rAmakrishna 



Contents. 



PAGE 

I. Existence of God 9 

II. Attributes of God 39 

III. Has God Any Form? 61 

IV. Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. . 83 
V. The Relation of Soul to God . . .. 121 

VI. What is an Incarnation of God? 145 

VII. Son of God 167 

VIII. Divine Principle in Man 193 

5 



Existence of God. 



"That which exists is one: men call it by various 
names.*' — Rig veda, I, 164, 46. 



The Existence of God. 

Human minds seem to have almost ex- 
hausted their reasoning powers in producing 
all kinds of arguments that ean be given both 
for and against the existence of God. For 
hundreds of years philosophers, scientists, and 
theologians among all nations have been bring- 
ing forward proofs either to show that there is 
such a Being as God or to deny His existence 
entirely. Of course most of the arguments 
and proofs in favor of the existence of God are 
convincing to those who already have some 
sort of belief in the Creator or some concep- 
tion of the Supreme Being. If we have been 
brought up in an atmosphere where there pre- 
vails a belief in God as the Creator and Ruler 
of the universe or as an extra-mundane Being 
who, dwelling outside of nature, commands 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

everything and directs the movements of the 
world, then unconsciously we breathe in and 
imbibe that belief from our childhood, and as 
we grow older we accept all the arguments 
and evidences that we can find in support of 
this preconceived idea. 

If we have already a conception of God as 
the First Cause, then all the inductions and 
inferences which maintain that idea will 
naturally appeal to us and we shall take them 
for granted. But those whose minds are not 
biased or influenced by any such idea, belief , or 
conception, those who are able to examine 
these proofs critically in the light of modern 
science, applying logic and reason, and those 
who freely investigate nature, searching for an 
extra- cosmic creator and ruler of the universe, 
may fail to find any convincing proof, and may 
therefore deny the existence of God, as such, 
or as the First Cause of all. 

We all know how the theory of evolution has 
revolutionized the old idea of the special crea- 
tion of the world out of nothing at some definite 
10 



The Existence of God. 

period of time. Those who found consolation 
in the design theory and held it to be the most 
unassailable ground in favor of the existence of 
an Omnipotent Designer, are now hopelessly 
discouraged by the introduction of the Dar- 
winian theories of natural selection and sexual 
selection. By these theories we can explain 
almost all the so-called designs of the Creator. 
Moreover, the design argument cannot make 
clear why under the government of a just, 
omnipotent, and omniscient Ruler should 
happen such disorders as the volcanic erup- 
tions on the Island of Martinique, or as the 
plagues, famines, and other disasters which 
devastate different countries, destroying hun- 
dreds of thousands of innocent living creatures. 
The design theory cannot trace the causes of 
such disasters; for if there were a Designer, 
His design should be perfect and there should 
be harmony instead of discord. 

The monotheistic religions have tried to 
explain tlie cause of all the disorders that occur 

in the universe by a theory of a Creator of evil 
11 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

as distinct and separate from the Designer of 
good. This method of explanation, however, 
does not help us much in proving the existence 
of a perfect, all-powerful and infinite God, for 
we shall then have to admit two beings, one 
the creator of good and the other the creator of 
evil, which will make each limited by the other 
and will take away all idea of the omnipotency 
and infinity of the Supreme Being. 

Those who believe that God is the First 
Cause of the universe, must determine the 
nature of that first cause — whether He is the 
efficient or the material cause. We know that 
these two causes are essential for the production 
of a thing, as, in the case of a pot, the potter is 
the efficient and the earth is the material cause. 
Now if we say that God is the efficient or 
instrumental cause of the universe, like the 
maker of a pot, then it would have been im- 
possible for Him to create without the help of 
the material cause, which must have co- 
existed with the Creator. Here we are con- 
fronted with the same difficulty — that God 
12 



The Existence of God. 

who stands outside the material cause, is lim- 
ited by matter, therefore He cannot be un- 
limited in the proper sense of the term. If, on 
the contrary, the material cause be meant by 
First Cause, then He must have gone through 
all the changes of evolution, which would make 
Him like a changeable, phenomenal object of 
the universe, a conclusion which we cannot 
accept. 

The moral argument that the moral laws 
presuppose a law-giver cannot prove the exist- 
ence of God, since we know that natural laws 
do not presuppose a law-giver. In the first 
place we should understand what " law" 
means. The forces of nature are operating in 
the universe in certain modes, and when the 
regularity and uniformity of these modes are 
observed and interpreted by the human mind, 
they are called "laws"; consequently these 
laws are to be found neither in nature nor out- 
side of it, but in the human mind. Secondly, 
as in external nature the natural forces acting 

under regular modes do not presuppose a law- 
13 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

giver, so it can be shown that the moral laws 
are but modes in which natural forces operate 
on the moral plane; that they do not need a 
moral law-giver, but their process is the same as 
the evolutionary process of the physical world. 
Furthermore, all such conceptions of God as 
the natural law-giver or the moral law-giver 
are rejected by advanced thinkers as the 
anthropomorphic ideas of uncultured minds. 
All these proofs and many other arguments 
like these which were considered to be sufficient 
to establish the existence of an extra-cosmic 
creator, ruler, or law-giver of the universe, are 
now thrown aside as imperfect and fallacious. 
In these days of science and reason when we 
try to prove the existence of God, we do not 
search for a creator or fashioner of the world, 
for a designer or first cause of the phenomenal 
universe; neither do we look for a moral law- 
giver; our conception of God has outgrown 
those stages of evolution and has become as 
large as the infinity of the universe. We no 

longer think that this earth is the stationary 
14 



The Existence of God. 

centre around which the sun, moon and other 
luminaries of the heavens revolve, moved by 
the supernatural power of angels, who, accord- 
ing to the old-fashioned belief, dwelt above the 
blue dome of the sky overhead and moved 
these planets according to their whims and 
fancies. We are just beginning to understand 
the vastness of the universe. Modern astron- 
omy has opened our eyes to the fact that this 
earth which we inhabit is to be considered as 
an infinitesimal point when compared with the 
immensity of space and with the innumerable 
cosmic bodies that exist above the horizon. We 
have learned that there are heavenly bodies 
beyond our solar system, the nearest one of 
which is so distant from us that its light, travel- 
ling at the rate of one hundred and eighty-six 
thousand miles per second, requires three and 
a half years to reach our earth. There are other 
stars so remote that thousands of years are 
needed for their light, travelling at the same 
rate, to arrive at our planet. We are assured 

that more than one thousand million stars have 
15 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

been discovered by the telescope and that there 
may be millions and millions of suns which are 
yet beyond the reach of our best instruments. 

Thus, as far as we can get by stretching our 
imagination we do not find any limit or bound- 
ary to the universe; we still have the feeling 
that there is something beyond. This sense 
of something existing beyond what we know 
and perceive is always with us; we cannot get 
rid of it. Even when we try to perceive a 
finite object, that sense of beyond is most 
intimately connected with our perception and 
conception of it. There is a feeling of the 
infinite very closely associated with all our 
ideas and concepts. Take, for instance, the 
geometrical figure, a square; when we try to 
perceive that square, we can only perceive it 
by perceiving the space beyond it. We see it 
as a figure enclosed by four straight lines, but 
at the same time there is a feeling of the space 
beyond, otherwise we could not perceive the 
square. 

Again when we look at the space which is cir- 
16 



The Existence of God. 

cumscribed by the horizon we do not lose the 

sense that there is something beyond that 

limit, that infinite space extends beyond the 

visible horizon. The same perception of limit- 

lessness or of the infinite is closely associated 

with the idea of time. We cannot conceive 

either its beginning or its end. There always 

remains the sense of the eternal beyond both 

before and after our conception of time. In 

this way we get the perception of eternity. 

The human mind is so peculiarly constituted 

that it is incapable of finding the absolutely 

defined limit of any thing of the world. Trees, 

mountains, rivers, earth, sun, moon, and all 

other objects of the senses are tangible, but do 

we find any definite limit when we carefully 

analyze our perceptions of these objects ? No, 

we do not. We may try our best, but we are 

sure to discover, sooner or later, that there is a 

sense of beyond constantly attached to them. 

Let us take an illustration: suppose that we 

stand under a big oak tree; we may look at 

it, touch it, or smell it, but can we perceive the 
17 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

absolute limit of that tree? Do our senses 
take in the whole tree at one time? No, our 
senses cannot reach its deepest roots or its 
highest branches, nor do we know what is 
going on under the bark or in the leaves. It is 
impossible for any one to take in the whole tree 
at one time; we may take it in by parts, but at 
the same time the perception of each part will 
under all circumstances leave in our minds the 
sense of beyond. Again when we think of the 
innumerable atoms and molecules that make 
up the body of that tree, its finite form vanishes, 
leaving an impression that what we call "tree" 
is indeed an expression of the infinite; for when 
the form is gone, that which is left of the tree 
is inseparable from the infinite ocean of some 
substance imperceptible to the senses. More- 
over, when we try to know the power or force 
that gives form to that tree and makes it living, 
which cannot be separated from it, then in one 
sense we must say that the tree has in it some- 
thing intangible, mysterious and unknowable; 

we cannot help it. 

18 



The Existence of God. 

In the same manner it can be shown that 
every finite perception or conception of an 
object brings with it a sense of beyond, a per- 
ception of the infinite, or something that is 
unknown and unknowable, of something that 
is eternal. Take a drop of water which is 
finite; put it under the microscope and you 
will see infinitesimal atoms moving about, some 
clearly visible, some so minute that they are 
hardly perceptible with the help of the most 
powerful microscope. Yet modern chemistry 
tells us that we can ascertain the relative 
position of these atoms so minute that millions 
upon millions of them could stand upon the 
point of a needle. Is not the infinitude of this 
small drop of water as wonderful as the in- 
finity of space? Indeed the drop of water is 
finite and infinite at the same time. When we 
see a flower, or touch it, we cannot help realiz- 
ing in the same way that it is the finite appear- 
ance of that something which we cannot know, 
which is infinite and eternal. It is like a 

beautiful painting upon the canvas of that 
19 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

eternal invisible substance of the universe which 
the senses cannot perceive, which the mind 
cannot grasp or comprehend; it is the expres- 
sion of that infinite matter which fills all space. 
No one can deny the existence of this substance 
which appears to our senses in an infinite 
variety of forms and shapes. 

Modern science tells us that this all-pervad- 
ing substance of the universe has neither be- 
ginning nor end, because we cannot know its 
limit either in space or in time. As far back 
as we can go in our conception of time, we find 
that the sense of beyond is present; it is there- 
fore eternal, that is, beginningless and endless. 
It is neither increased nor diminished by any- 
thing ; we cannot add one iota to this sub- 
stance, nor can we subtract anything from it; 
it is consequently unchangeable in quantity as 
well as in quality. It is all-powerful because 
all the forces manifested in the perceptible 
world proceed from and rest upon that un- 
limited substance. We may call it by what- 
ever name we like; it is the real essence of all 
20 



The Existence of God. 

phenomena. It is like the ocean upon which 
the waves of phenomenal forms are rising and, 
after playing their parts, are disappearing again 
and again. All these forms of sun, or moon, 
or stars, of human beings or animals, are 
nothing but waves in that infinite ocean. As 
the waves cannot exist without the ocean, so 
finite objects cannot exist without the infinite 
substance which is behind and beyond all 
phenomena. That infinite substance is the 
support of the universe; it is one because it is 
infinite; if the infinite were many, it would lose 
its limitless nature and become finite. 

Ever since the dawn of intellect upon the 
horizon of the human mind there has been a 
constant struggle for a definite knowledge of 
this something which is beyond all finite exist- 
ence and yet is not finite. The human mind 
cannot rest contented with the mere play of 
appearances, but always yearns to know what 
it is that appears. From ancient times those 
who have had some kind of perception of this 

infinite as related to the phenomenal universe 
21 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

have also tried to express their ideas by giving 
different names to it. Thus have arisen the 
various names by which human minds have 
designated this infinite substance; but each of 
these names now stands like a landmark in the 
path of the evolution of the conception of God. 
Whether we call that infinite substance God, 
or Creator, or Designer, or First Cause, or the 
Father, or Jehovah, or Allah, or Brahman, we 
mean the same infinite, eternal, all-powerful 
and unchangeable Substance. Every individual 
has a vague perception of this infinite around 
him or her; some are more conscious of it 
than others. The more that we are dissatisfied 
and discontented with finite things, the stronger 
grows in us the desire to know more about 
this infinite, to understand more about that 
something which is not finite, which is beyond 
finite time and beyond limited space. When 
we find no pleasure, no satisfaction, no happi- 
ness in objects limited by time and space, and 
when we realize the transitoriness of all that is 

finite, our inner nature longs for that which is 
22 



The Existence of God. 

absolutely unlimited, and we wish to know 
where it is and how it is. We seek it here and 
there, not knowing exactly what we want; we 
struggle for knowledge; and this struggle, this 
search for that Infinite Being, grows stronger 
and stronger until the realization of the true 
nature of the infinite is obtained. 

To a materialist who studies the objective 
side of the universe, this infinite substance 
appears as material and insentient; he calls 
it matter, and tries to deduce this phenomenal 
world from this infinite unintelligent matter. 
The matter of the materialist, however, is as 
infinite, as eternal, as all-powerful as the God 
or the Supreme Being of the religionists. A 
materialist simply studies the objective world 
and does not recognize or study the subjective 
universe; therefore he is satisfied with his con- 
clusions; but as the objective side is only one- 
half of the universe, his conclusions are one- 
sided. Those who, on the contrary, study 
subjective nature, discover the same infinite 

behind their limited minds, beyond every idea, 
23 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

thought, feeling, or sensation. The finite mind 
is that which takes the forms of thoughts, ideas, 
feelings, sensations, and which is limited by the 
sense of "I." When, however, we try to think 
of the definite boundary of the sense of "I" or 
of the finite mind, we cannot find it; we fail to 
trace the beginning or end of that which thinks, 
or feels, or perceives, or conceives, or imagines. 
We realize that as physical forms are like the 
waves in the infinite ocean of eternal space 
filled with substance, so thoughts, ideas, feel- 
ings, sensations are but so many waves in the 
infinite ocean of mental space filled with finer 
substance. As we cannot attach the sense of 
"I" to our physical form, so we cannot call 
these mental forms our own. Thus after care- 
ful study the students of the subjective world 
come to the conclusion that the subjective 
infinite is the Reality of the universe, and that 
external phenomena are but the representa- 
tions or projections of the subjective infinite, 
or mind. According to them time and space do 

not exist outside the mind, consequently every- 
24 



The Existence of God. 

thing in space and time is like a picture of the 

subjective idea. They deny the existence of 

matter and trace the origin of all qualities or 

powers of the finite mind to that infinite mind. 

They give the attribute of intelligence to it and 

call it the eternal,^intelligent, cosmic mind. 

The existence of infinite mind is as undeniable 

as that of infinite matter. But this substance, 

whether we call it mind or matter, subject or 

object, is the one unknowable Being of the 

universe. All mental as well as all physical 

forms are but its appearances. It is called 

in Sanskrit Brahman. From this infinite and 

eternal Brahman we have come into existence; 

in It we live and into It we return at the end of 

phenomenal existence. 

In ancient India the question was asked, 

"What is God?" The answer we find in 

Vedanta: "That from which all animate and 

inanimate objects have come into existence, in 

which they live and play like waves in the sea, 

and into which they return ultimately at the 

time of dissolution, know that to be Brahman, 
25 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

or the infinite Substance, or God." Who can 
live without being sustained by this Infinite 
One ? As a painting cannot stand without the 
background, so phenomena cannot exist with- 
out being supported by the infinite Substance 
or Brahman. It pervades the universe, inter- 
penetrating atoms and molecules, yet it lies 
beyond all the mental and physical phenomena 
of the manifested universe. It is not confined 
by the limitations of sex or gender; we may 
call this Being he, she, or it. This infinite 
substance or Brahman is incomprehensible 
and unknowable to finite minds. That to 
which the modern agnostics refer when they use 
the term " Unknowable" is the same Infinite 
Being. 

Here we must not forget the meaning of the 
verb "to know." In its ordinary sense "to 
know" means first to perceive through the 
senses and then to form a concept of the object 
perceived. Consequently, all our knowledge 
is limited by the power of perception as well 

as by the mind. To know God or the Infinite 
26 



The Existence of God. 

Being by the same kind of knowledge as that 
by which we know a stone or a tree or a dog 
would be tantamount to annihilating God. 
Because a known God in this sense would 
cease to be God; He would become a phenom- 
enal object, an idol, and not the Infinite Being, 
for in trying to know God, we would be bringing 
that Infinite Being within the limits of our finite 
mind. In this sense, therefore, God, or the In- 
finite Being, is always unknown and unknow- 
able. Shall we. then join the agnostics and be 
contented with our ignorance and powerless- 
ness to know the Infinite ? Shall we cease from 
all our attempts and struggles to understand 
the nature of the Infinite or to know the exist- 
ence of God when He is unknowable? No. 
Here is a great fact to learn, that although the 
Infinite Being is unknown and unknowable 
according to the point of view of modern 
agnosticism, He is more than known, more than 
knowable from the standpoint of the Vedanta. 
He is the essence of our being, the essence of our 

Self. He is the source of our knowledge. AU 
27 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

knowledge proceeds from that infinite Wisdom; 
when we know a thing, we know it in and 
through Him. When, for instance, we know 
a table, we say that the table is known, but can 
we trace the source of this knowledge? Do 
we know from where it comes? It is not 
created by us. It is eternal; it exists in the 
infinite mind or that something behind the 
finite mind, and through that knowledge we 
say that the table is known. When we say 
that ether is unknown and unknowable, we use 
this same knowledge as our guide. That by 
which we are able to cognize a thing and to 
call it known or unknowji is Divinity itself. 
Therefore whether we know a thing or do not 
know it, knowledge in either case is possible 
only through the one source of all wisdom and 
consciousness. 

It is for this reason that God is more than 
anything known and knowable or anything 
unknown and unknowable. He is infinitely 
higher than either. He is the essence of the 
ego or " I " ; no one can live without being sus- 



The Existence of God. 

tained by that infinite source of existence, 
knowledge, and consciousness. It is not that 
God dwells somewhere outside of the universe 
and from there is making my blood circulate 
or my heart beat, but He is in every cell of my 
body. He fills the space of my form. I owe my 
existence to Him. He is the Soul of my soul 
as well as the Soul of the universe. He is in 
you, in me, in the chair, in the wall and every- 
where, yet we do not see or know Him. It 
would be a great degradation of God if He 
could be known by our ordinary knowledge. 
He would then be like a changeable, limited, 
phenomenal something such as we perceive 
with our senses; whereas He is in fact the 
Knower of the universe, the Eternal Subject 
who knows everything in each of us. The 
Knower or the Subject in us is unchangeable, 
eternal and one. i 

When we understand that by knowledge is 
meant objectification, we realize that all our 
attempts to express that infinite Subject in 

language — to call Him Father, Brother, or dear- 
29 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

est Friend — are nothing but so many efforts of 
the human mind to objectify the infinite, un- 
limited Subject of the universe. We cannot, 
however, remain satisfied with this imperfect 
knowledge of Divinity; we desire to know 
more about the Infinite Being. Gradually we 
may come to realize that He is the Creator of 
the world, the Governor of all, or the First 
Cause of the universe. But here again we 
shall not rest content; we shall still wish to 
know more about Him. Then we shall find 
that the same Infinite Substance or Being 
which is beyond every finite object, beyond 
space and time, above mind and body, is in 
reality not very far from us; wherefore it is 
said in the Vedanta: 

"He is far from us, yet He is nearer than 
the nearest; He dwells in everything, yet He 
is outside the phenomenal universe; He is 
infinitely smaller than the atom of an atom, 
yet He is infinitely larger than the largest 
solar system, than the space which covers the 

perceptible universe." 

30 



The Existence of God. 

When we see the sun, moon, or stars, we 

see that part of the Infinite which is visible to 

our eyes; when we hear a sound, we perceive 

that part of the Infinite which is audible to 

our ears; but God is in reality beyond light, 

sound, odor, taste or touch. He is the same 

Infinite Substance which transcends time and 

space, mind and sense powers. By knowing 

so much of the Infinite, however, we are yet 

unsatisfied, we still desire to know more. Our 

souls still long for a deeper knowledge of that 

all-pervading Substance. The more we study 

phenomenal objects the less are we content 

with the knowledge that we can gather from this 

study. We may devote the whole of our lives 

and spend all the energy we possess in trying 

to satisfy this craving for knowledge of the 

Infinite by studying the phenomenal world, 

but this thirst for knowledge will not be 

quenched; it will remain, as it does in all the 

great thinkers of the world. We may read 

books, philosophies, sciences, and Scriptures, 

but the longing of the soul will never be fulfilled 
31 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

by reading books. There is only one way to 

quench this thirst and that is by realizing the 

Infinite. 

The word "realize" means something more 

than ordinary knowing. By "realizing" we » 

mean being and becoming one with the 

Infinite. If we can know that the all-pervading 

Being is the Essence of our lives and the Soul 

of our souls, we become more and more 

acquainted with that Infinite and understand 

its whole nature — not the objective side alone, 

not merely as the material substance, but as 

the infinite mind substance, and also as that 

which transcends this substance of mental 

phenomena. I mean when we have realized 

the Infinite Spirit, when we have found that It 

is the source of all powers and forces as well as 

the basis of our consciousness, the foundation 

of our existence, the life and the reality of the 

universe, then the thirst for knowledge is 

quenched, then all questions regarding the 

existence of God are answered, all doubts 

cease forever. 

32 



The Existence of God. 

But it may be asked : How can we know the 
Supreme Being as the Soul of our souls ? By 
rising above the plane of consciousness of the 
finite. This plane of consciousness will never 
reveal the true nature of the Infinite Being 
because it functions within the limitations of 
the senses, consequently it cannot reach the 
infinite which is above all limits. We may 
have a vague perception of it or we may think 
of it as the subject or object, as mind or 
matter; but that is not the same as the realiza- 
tion of the Absolute One. If we can rise above 
time and space, shutting out all sense objects, 
making the mind impervious to all sensations 
of external objects, if we can then direct the 
whole energy of mind and soul towards the 
Infinite within us, then we shall be able to 
realize the Soul of our souls, then the truth of 
the existence of God will be revealed to us. 

If we wish to know God, we shall have to 

enter into the state of superconsciousness. 

All the great spiritual leaders of the world, 

Jesus the Christ, Buddha, Ramakrishna, and 
33 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

others, who preached the existence of God, 
first realized Him by entering into the state of 
superconsciousness. Those who have studied 
Raja Yoga* and have practised it will under- 
stand what superconsciousness means. All 
revelation and inspiration come in that state. 
The longing for more knowledge has led the 
river of the soul into the ocean of Infinite 
Wisdom. In that state the individual soul 
realizes the blissfulness which is beyond the 
reach of ordinary mortals, which cannot be 
obtained by wealth, property, or worldly pros- 
perity. Friends and relatives cannot help us 
in rising to that blissful condition. It is a 
state attaining which nothing remains unattain- 
able, realizing which the true nature of every- 
thing is revealed. It is a state in which no 
desire remains unfulfilled, in which the indi- 
vidual soul, transcending all limitations, be- 
comes one with the Infinite and enjoys un- 

* u Raja Yoga," by Swami Vivekananda. Published 
under the auspices of the Vedanta Society of New 
York. 

34 



The Existence of God. 

bounded happiness both here and hereafter. 
Such a knower of the Infinite says: 

"I have attained everything that is to be 
attained, I have realized all that can be real- 
ized. I have known that Infinite Being that 
is worshipped under different names by dif- 
ferent nations as God, or Father in heaven, 
or Allah, or Buddha, or Christ, or Divine 

Mother, or Brahman." 
35 



Attributes of God. 



" The Supreme Spirit is devoid of the defining attributes 
of form, color, etc. He is unchangeable, unborn, eternal, 
indestructible , imperishable and is always of one nature. 
He is pure and the repository of all blessed qualities.*' 
— Vishnu Parana. 



Attributes of God. 

God is described in the different Scriptures 
as a spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable, true 
and one ; the omnipotent and omniscient 
creator and governor of the universe, and the 
repository of all blessed qualities, such as jus- 
tice, goodness, mercy, and love. If we ask a 
Christian, a Jew, a Mahometan, a Parsee, a 
Hindu, or a follower of any other sect or creed 
what is his conception of God, each one of them 
will quote passages from his Scriptures giving 
the same attributes to the Divine Being, whom 
they worship under various names — such as 
Father in heaven, Jehovah, Allah, Ahura 
Mazda, or Brahman. The names may vary 
but the attributes of God are with each exactly 
the same. 

A catholic priest who bows down before the 
39 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

image of Jesus the Christ and prays to Him, 
who burns incense and lights candles; a 
protestant clergyman who does not believe in 
bowing down before any image; a Mahometan 
priest who is a fanatical iconoclast and denies 
all forms of God; or a Hindu priest who wor- 
ships an idol in a temple, invariably agree with 
one another in describing the attributes of the 
God they worship. There is no difference be- 
tween the God of a Christian or a Mahometan 
of a Parsee or a Hindu, because each of them 
believes that God is infinite and one. 

How can there be many Gods when their 
attributes are the same and identical every- 
where? Yet a Christian calls the Hindu a 
heathen, and a Mahometan calls a Christian 
an unbeliever, and each in turn quarrels with 
the other. Why is there so much persecution 
if God is one ? Because of the ignorance of His 
believers. They do not even try to understand 
the true meaning of any of the attributes which 
they give to God; their eyes are blinded by 

ignorance, fanaticism and bigotry. Stimu- 
40 



Attributes of God. 

lated by false belief and superstition, they 
maintain that their God is the only true God, 
while the God of other nations is untrue, and 
they cannot see that every one worships the 
same Infinite Being. Fanatical Christians 
preach: "Beware of the God of the heathen, 
He cannot give salvation to His worshippers"; 
as if there were two Gods. 

Ignorance is the mother of fanaticism, 
bigotry, superstition, and of all that springs 
from them. Fanatics cannot realize that 
God is the common property of all, that 
whether He be worshipped by a Christian 
or by a Hindu, He is one, because His attri- 
butes are identical. Among those who are 
not so fanatical there are many who give 
the same attributes to God without, how- 
ever, understanding their true meaning. 
Ninety per cent, of monotheists all over 
the world say: "God is infinite and one," 
but at the same time they think of some 
being with a human form sitting somewhere 

outside of the universe. If we ask them 
41 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

the meaning of the word " infinite," their 
answers are often full of illogical nonsense. 
They will make God as finite as possible 
and bring forward all sorts of fallacious 
arguments to support their position. 

Those who believe in a personal God, 
give Him a human form, human attributes 
and a human personality without realizing 
that they are making their Lord limited in 
power, personality and attributes. Of course 
it is not their fault; it is quite natural that 
they should think of the Ruler of the uni- 
verse as a human being, because we are all 
human and the limit of our conception is a 
human being. Our world is a human world, 
our God must be a human God, and our ex- 
planation of the universe must also be human. 
Having seen the governor of a country, who 
is a human being with certain powers, we 
form a concept and keep it in our minds 
when we conceive the Supreme Being as the 
governor of the universe. Naturally we give 

Him a human form and a human personality, 
42 



Attributes of God. 

only with this difference — that the governor 
of the country is limited in power, size, and 
qualifications, while the Ruler of the universe 
is unlimited in power and immensely magni- 
fied in size and qualifications; yet however 
great He may be, He must still appear more 
or less like a human being. In this way our 
explanation of the universe has become 
human, and our God has acquired a human 
form and personality. If a cow became a 
philosopher and had a religion, her concep- 
tion of God would be in cow form, her ex- 
planation of the universe would be through 
that cow God. She would not be able to 
comprehend our Lord at all. Similarly if 
a tiger had a God, his conception would be 
of a tiger form. If there be a being with a 
form different from ours, with a nature higher 
than ours, his God will be like himself. As 
we do not know what conception of God 
the people of Mars have, we cannot know 
their God; if they are not like human beings, 

their conception will differ from ours. So 
43 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

none of these pictures of God and none o£ 
these explanations of the universe can be 
complete in itself. It may be a partial truth, 
but not the whole truth. Therefore all 
those conceptions of God which we so often 
hear — that He is like a human being sitting 
on a throne outside the universe and from 
there governing the universe by His powers, 
are incomplete and imperfect. 

But ordinary people do not see this. Each 
is sure that his conception and explanation 
are the best. They cannot realize how there 
can be anything higher or greater than what 
they already believe. Yet when they are 
asked, what are the attributes of such a 
human God, they will say: "He is a spirit, 
infinite, eternal, unchangeable, true and one; 
He is the omniscient and omnipotent creator 
and the repository of all blessed qualities." 
Thus they unconsciously make God finite 
and infinite at the same time. Can there 
be anything more absurd and self-contra- 
dictory than a finite infinite God! If He 
44 



Attributes of God. 

is finite, He is limited by time, space and 
causation, must have a beginning and end, 
and cannot be unchangeable. A finite God 
must be changeable and must perish like all 
mortal things. Are we ready to believe in 
such a perishable God? Not for a moment. 
We cannot give any form to God because 
form means limitation in space by time. 
m By giving a form to God, we make Him 
subject to time, space and the law of causa- 
tion, consequently we make Him mortal 
like any other object of the phenomenal 
universe which has form. God with a form 
cannot be immortal and eternal, He must die. 
Therefore we cannot say that God is finite 
or that He has any form. 

He is infinite. But let us have a clear 
understanding of the meaning of this word 
"infinite," and use it in its proper sense. 
That which is not limited by time and space 
and not subject to the law of causation, which 
is above time, space, and beyond all laws 

is infinite. God is not limited by time or 
45 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

space, neither has He any cause. He is 
absolute. The infinite again must be one, 
otherwise it is finite. If there be any other 
thing beside that infinite then it is no longer 
infinite; it is limited by that object, conse- 
quently it has become finite. Thus if we 
admit that God is infinite, we deny the exist- 
ence of any other thing besides God; other- 
wise He would be limited by that thing, and 
be subject to time, space and the law of causa- 
tion. 

If we say that matter exists separate from 
and outside of God, we have made Him 
limited by matter, we have made Him 
finite and perishable. If we think of our- 
selves as separate from God, as independent 
of His Being, then in our thought we have 
denied His illimitable nature. There is for 
the same reason, not a single particle of matter 
in the universe that can exist independent 
of God's existence or outside of God; if He 
is infinite and one, our bodies and every 

thing of the universe from the minutest atom 
46 



Attributes of God. 

to the largest planetary system, from the 
lowest animalcule to the highest Being, 
exists in and through that Infinite Existence. 
This may be startling to many, but the fact 
cannot be denied. If we wish to be logical, 
if the word " infinite" conveys any meaning 
at all, we cannot avoid the logical conclusion 
which must inevitably follow. If, on the con- 
trary, we use the word " infinite" meaning 
something finite, how foolish and illogical 
shall we be! The conclusion is this: If 
God is infinite and one, then mind and mat- 
ter, subject and object, creator and creation, 
and all relative dual existences are within 
that Being, and not outside of it. The whole 
universe is in God and God is in it; it is 
inseparable from God. I am in Him and 
He is in me; each one of us is inseparable 
from His being; if one atom of my body 
exists, that existence cannot be separated 
from His existence. 

We have now understood the meaning of 

the two attributes infinite and one. Let us 

47 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

examine the meaning of other attributes. 
God is unchangeable, that is, He is always 
the same and never subject to any change 
whatsoever, because He is eternal, without 
beginning or end. That which has a be- 
ginning must have an end and go through 
all the changes of birth, growth, decay and 
death; everything that has a beginning must 
grow, decay and die. That which is limited 
by time and space must go through all these 
changes, which, on the contrary, never affect 
the infinite Being. 

God is a spirit. What is to be understood 
by spirit? It does not mean a shadowy form 
or an apparition. By this term is meant 
pure, self-luminous intelligence, the source 
of all consciousness, the basis and foundation 
of all knowledge, the background of mind 
and matter, of subject and object. Again 
He is true. That which is not God is untrue 
or unreal; or, in other words, that which 
is finite, manifold, changeable, non-eternal, 

transitory, is untrue and unreal. Further- 
48 



Attributes of God. 

more, God is omnipresent and omniscient, 
and upon Him depends the existence of mind 
and matter, of subject and object. Let us 
understand this a little more clearly. What- 
ever exists in the universe, whether mental 
or physical, subjective or objective, can 
exist only as related to a self-conscious intelli- 
gence. When we analyze our perceptions, 
we find that that which is not related to any 
state of our consciousness does not exist in 
relation to us, because we do not know any- 
thing about it. Existence and knowledge 
or consciousness are inseparable. 

As our small worlds of which we are con- 
scious, exist in relation to our conscious 
being, so the phenomenal universe can only 
exist as being related to the knowledge of the 
cosmic knower or the universal Being; other- 
wise there cannot be any existence, because 
existence and knowledge, existence and con- 
sciousness are inseparable; therefore God is 
called omniscient or all-knowing. Nothing 
exists without being related directly to the 

49 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

intelligence and knowledge of the infinite 
Being. As this infinite Being pervades the 
universe and interpenetrates every particle 
of matter, giving existence to everything,* 
so the light of His knowledge pervades the 
universe; therefore He is omnipresent and 
omniscient. If these various conceptions, 
obtained by analyzing the attributes of God, 
be summed up, we shall learn that God is the 
Absolute Being, eternal, true and everlasting, 
the one infinite ocean of self-existent, self- 
luminous intelligence which is the source 
of all consciousness. Nothing can exist out- 
side of or independent of that one omnipresent 
and omniscient Being of the universe. 

Here a question arises, — if there be no 
other being beside God, what will become of 
the diverse phenomena of the universe, which 
we perceive with our senses? Do they not 
exist? Yes, they do, but their existence 
depends upon God. They have no separate 
and independent existence; they are like 

froth, bubbles and waves on that infinite ocean 
50 



Attributes of God. 

of intelligence. As a wave cannot exist for 
a moment independent of the ocean, so the 
phenomena of the world depend for their 
existence upon the Absolute Being. 

This ocean of pure self-luminous intelli- 
gence and existence is described in Vedanta 
by the word Brahman, which means absolute 
existence and intelligence, the unlimited source 
of knowledge and of consciousness; while 
the power which produces these waves of 
phenomena is called Maya. This inscruta- 
ble power of Maya dwells in the infinite ocean 
of Reality or Brahman from eternity to eter- 
nity. It is as inseparable from the Divine 
Being as the power of burning is inseparable 
from fire. Sometimes this power remains 
latent as undifferentiated cosmic energy and 
sometimes it manifests itself as the various 
forces of nature. When that power is latent, 
all phenomena disappear, and dissolution or 
involution takes place; but when it begins 
to express itself as natural forces, it produces 
the waves and bubbles of phenomena in the 

51 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

ocean of Brahman. Then the Absolute Being 
seen through the active or manifesting power 
of Maya or cosmic energy, appears as the 
creator and governor of the universe. 

He is called in Sanskrit "Iswara," which 
means also the creator and ruler of the uni- 
verse. He is the first-born lord, or the cosmic 
ego. This cosmic ego, the Iswara or lord, 
is called the creator of the universe. Here 
let us understand clearly in what sense God 
can be properly called the creator of the world. 
Does He create it out of nothing as described 
in the monotheistic and dualistic Scriptures 
of the Christians, Jews, Mahometans, and 
Parsees? No, He does not create anything 
out of nothing; He is not the creator in that 
sense. In the first place we must not forget 
the truth, discovered and established by ancient 
and modern science, that something cannot 
come out of nothing, consequently to a sci- 
entific mind creation out of nothing has no 
meaning. The theory of a special creation 

of the world as we read in Genesis has been 
52 



Attributes of God. 

proved to be an unscientific myth. Secondly, 
the doctrine of evolution is now so unques- 
tionably established that we can safely accept 
it in the place of the mythical story of special 
creation. Therefore when we speak of God 
as the creator of the universe, we do not mean 
one who brought the world into existence out 
of nothing as our forefathers understood by 
this expression; but applying the light of 
science and being guided by the reasoning of 
the Vedanta philosophy, we must understand 
that Iswara is called the creator because He 
projects out of His own being the powers 
existing there potentially and makes them 
active. Thus the word creator means the 
projector of all forces and of all phenomenal 
forms which potentially existed as eternal 
energy in Iswara. That projection from 
the potential into the kinetic or active state 
takes place gradually through the process of 
the evolution of the Maya or the cosmic energy 
which dwells in the Iswara of Vedanta. Ve- 
danta teaches that although Brahman or the 
53 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

Absolute Being or Godhead is above all 
activity, still the Iswara is full of power and 
action. He starts the evolution of the cosmic 
energy which before the beginning of the 
cyclic evolution held all phenomenal names 
and forms in its bosom. Iswara, according 
to Vedanta, is both the material and the effi- 
cient cause of the universe. He does not 
create matter, but matter is only a certain 
state or mode of motion of the universal Divine 
energy. When the dormant power of Maya 
begins to manifest, all material forms com- 
mence to appear. 

The next attribute of Iswara is that of 
ruler or governor of the universe. How 
does He govern? Does He govern the world 
from outside, as it is said in the Christian 
Scriptures ? No, He governs from within and 
never from without. He is the Antar-ydmin 9 
the internal ruler of the universe. As the 
soul is the internal ruler of the body, so Iswara, 
being the soul of the universe, governs it 

from within and not from outside. 
54 



Attributes of God. 

He is the repository of all blessed qualities, 
that is, all that is good, all that is great, all 
that is sublime, is but the expression of the 
Divine power. But God Himself is above 
good and evil, beyond virtue and vice, above 
all relativity and beyond all conditions. He 
loves all beings equally and impartially; He 
does not love one nation for certain qualifica- 
tions and hate other nations, but He loves 
every living soul, whether human or animal, 
equally. Just as the sun shines alike upon 
the heads of sages and sinners, so the love 
of that Divine Being touches the souls of all. 
Why does He love all beings equally? Be- 
cause each individual soul is related to God 
as a part is related to the whole. As a part 
cannot exist independently, so our souls can- 
not exist independent of the Soul of the uni- 
verse. Therefore we live and move and exist 
in and through the whole, or Iswara. God 
loves His parts because He cannot help it. 
How can it be otherwise? How is it possible 

for a whole not to love its own parts? Love 
55 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

means the expression of oneness. At the 

bottom of all earthly love exists this idea of 

oneness; the lover and the beloved must be 

one, one in spirit, in thoughts, in ideas, in 

everything, otherwise there is no real love. 

Therefore God is all-loving. Thus if we try 

with the aid of the light of science and 

reason to understand the true significance 

of the attributes of God, we are forcibly 

driven to the conclusions of Vedanta. With 

the help of Vedanta we can realize the true 

relation which the universe bears to God, 

which the individual soul bears to the infinite 

Being. 

If we once understand that God is the source 

of all existence and power and is the one 

Reality, that outside of God no existence is 

possible, then we begin to feel the presence 

of divinity everywhere. In every action of 

our lives we realize that the divine power is 

working through us, and at every moment of 

our earthly existence we feel ourselves to 

be like so many instruments through which 
56 



Attributes of God. 

the Divine will is manifesting itself and doing 
whatever He ordains. All the actions of our 
lives are then turned into acts of worship of 
the Supreme Deity. Being dead to selfish- 
ness, we are then able to say from the bottom 
of our hearts, "O Lord, Thy will, not mine, 
be done." 

All fear then vanishes, all sins are redeemed, 
and the individual soul becomes free from 
the bondage of ignorance and selfishness. 
This realization leads to a still higher and 
closer union with the Divine. The soul 
gradually realizes spiritual oneness with the 
universal Spirit or Brahman. Thus having 
attained to God-consciousness, which is the 
highest ideal of all religions, the individual 
soul becomes like Christ and declares "I and 

my Father are one." 

57 



Has God any Form? 



" The all-pervading, omnipotent and formless Spirit 
manifests Himself in various forms under different 
names to fulfil the desires of His worshippers" — Vishnu 
Purana. 



Has God any Form? 

Students of the Old Testament are fa- 
miliar with the fact that the ancient Israelites 
conceived their God Elohim or Yahveh, 
the Lord God, as possessing human attributes 
and a human form. There are many passages 
which testify that God walked with Adam 
and Eve and spoke to them; He ate and 
drank with the elders of Israel; and the Lord 
said to Moses: "I will cover thee with my 
hand while I pass by, and I will take my hand 
away and thou shalt see my back parts; but 
my face shalt not be seen." (Ex. xxxiii, 22, 
23.) Yahveh was the Lord of the House of 
Israel. He was, moreover, not only the God 
of Abraham and of Moses, but He became 
the Supreme Being and the only God, above 

all gods. Upon this conception of the Supreme 
61 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

Being with a human form and human per- 
sonality have been built the structures of the 
two great monotheistic or dualistic religions, 
Judaism and Christianity. 

The same Elohim or Yahveh, the Lord 
of the house of Israel, the God of Abraham, 
of Isaac and Jacob, and of Moses, is the al- 
mighty Creator, Ruler, and Father in heaven 
of the Jews and Christians of the present day. 
He sits on a throne outside the universe, hav- 
ing a right hand and a left hand, and accord- 
ing to the Christian belief, Jesus sits at His 
right hand. Neither Christ nor Moses nor 
any of the prophets had to introduce a new 
God among the Jews. All of them accepted 
and worshipped the same Elohim or Yahveh, 
who was at first only the tribal god of the house 
of Israel. Here we must not forget the original 
meaning of the word " Elohim," which, al- 
though translated into English in the Old 
Testament as God, at first meant "that which 
is feared" and was sometimes used vaguely 

to describe unseen powers or "objects of 
62 



Has God any Form? 

man's fear" or superhuman beings not prop- 
erly regarded as divine in their nature. It 
was also applied to a disembodied soul, 
which was conceived as the image of the 
body in which it once dwelt, as, for example, 
we read in First Samuel (ch. 38, v. 13), the 
witch of Endor saw "Elohim ascending out 
of the earth," meaning thereby some being 
or disembodied spirit of an unearthly, super- 
human character. 

This word "Elohim" was the plural form 
of "Eloah" and was also used to denote the 
gods of the heathen. It was a generic name 
given to supernatural characters of all kinds 
having quasicorporeal forms, as well as to 
the gods of different tribes. Chemosh, Dagon, 
Baal, Yahveh were all known as Elohim and 
each of them had a human form. But in 
spite of its plural meaning the Hebrew prophets 
used it especially for Yahveh the God of Israel. 
The Israelites, however, believed Yahveh to 
be immeasurably superior to the Elohim of 

other tribes; while the inscription on the 
63 



Vedanta Philosophy, 

Moabite stone shows that King Mesa held 
Chemosh to be as unquestionably the superior 
of Yahveh. It is said: "So now Yahveh 
the Elohim of Israel hath dispossessed the 
Amorites from before His people Israel, and 
shouldst thou possess it? Wilt not thou pos- 
sess that which Chemosh thy Elohim giveth 
thee to possess?" (Judges xi, 23, 24.) The 
Israelites of those days considered the differ- 
ence between one Elohim and another to be one 
of degree and not of kind. The same word 
was likewise applied to Teraphim, the images 
of family gods which were only deceased ances- 
tors. Laban asks his son-in-law most indig- 
nantly, "Wherefore hast thou stolen my 
Elohim ?" 

From a careful study of the Old Testa- 
ment we see that, although the Israelites 
believed in many kinds of Elohim and used 
the word indiscriminately, Yahveh was the 
God of their tribe, while other tribes had 
Elohim of their own. When the house of 

Israel conquered any other tribe, their tribal 
64 



Has God any Form? 

God Yahveh stood at the head of the gods of 
the conquered tribe, as we know from history. 
When the Babylonians and Chaldeans were 
conquered by the Israelites, Yahveh was 
placed above Bel, Baal, Merodoch, Moloch, 
and the other Elohim or gods of the conquered 
tribes. Thus by the gradual process of evolu- 
tion Elohim or Yahveh became the king or 
Lord of all gods. We can now easily under- 
stand what the Hebrew Psalmist meant when 
he said: " Among the gods there is none like 
unto thee, the king above all gods." But 
although Yahveh became the supreme Lord 
of all gods, hence of all tribes and nations, he 
still did not lose his human form, human attri- 
butes and human personality. Even when 
he became the creator and ruler of the universe, 
he had the same human form, the same attri- 
butes and personality as were ascribed to 
him by the ancient Israelites. A belief in 
many gods was at the foundation of the Judaic 
conception of one Supreme Being, and Yah- 
veh, the tribal god originally worshipped 
65 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

under the form of a bull, gradually evolved 
into "god of gods" and finally into the one 
and only God of the universe. 

In like manner it can be shown that among 
the ancient Greeks and other Aryan nations 
the idea of a personal God with a human 
form gradually developed from a belief in 
many tribal gods or nature gods. All mono- 
theistic conceptions can be traced back to 
polytheistic beliefs. The ancient Greeks, like 
all other primitive peoples, worshipped many 
nature gods. They perceived the forces of 
nature and gave to them human powefs and 
attributes. We know that Zeus, Apollo, Athene 
were all personified powers of nature. Zeus 
originally meant sky, hence god of the sky, 
the god of rain or rainer. The old prayer 
of the Athenians was "Rain, rain, O dear 
Zeus, on the land of the Athenians and on 
the fields." Here "O dear Zeus" or dear 
sky at once brings in the personal element. 
"Dear sky" refers to the god of the sky, 

the governor of rain. Apollo again was the 
66 



Has God any Form ? 

sun god; Athene, the dawn-goddess. Each 
of these mythological deities was, further- 
more, originally the god of some family or 
clan, and afterward when one family became 
stronger than others, its family god stood at 
the head of the other gods; thus in course of 
time the ancient God Zeus-pitar or in Latin 
Jupiter, meaning in English Father in heaven, 
became the God of all gods and was supposed 
to be the God of all nations. 

So it was in ancient India during the Vedic 
period. The Vedic poets at first personified 
the forces of nature and gave them human 
attributes and intelligence. They were called 
in Sanskrit "Devas" or "Bright Ones," 
such as Indra the rainer or thunderer, Agni 
the god of fire, Vayu the god of storm or 
wind, Varuna the god of the sky, and so on. 
Eventually Varuna, lord of the sky, became 
Deva Deva, the God of all gods, and thus 
gradually arose in India the monotheistic 
conception of the Supreme personal God 

with human attributes. It can in the same 
67 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

way be shown that the tribal gods among the 
Semitic tribes were at first nothing but nature 
gods. 

It may be asked here : Why were the forces 
of nature personified? Because primitive 
man could not help it. Wherever he saw 
any activity or motion, he compared it to 
the conscious activity of his own body or to 
the voluntary movements of his limbs, and 
explained this natural activity by imagining 
it to be the conscious act of some superhuman 
being, possessing will-power and intelligence, 
and who was called the mover. From this 
we can easily understand the reason for the 
ancient belief that all material objects like 
the sun, moon and stars, were moved by 
angels. Now we say "it rains" or "it thun- 
ders," but the primitive man used to say "he 
rains," "he thunders." In this manner the 
unscientific minds of ancient times came to 
a belief in natural agencies. These agents 
were like human beings, only more powerful 

than any mortal agent. Hence was developed 
68 



Has God any Form? 

the idea of superhuman beings who became 
tribal gods, who were invoked in time of need. 
The Lord of the universe and the king above 
all gods was necessarily infinitely more power- 
ful than these superhuman agents of nature, 
but still he had a human form infinitely mag- 
nified in size, because it is extremely difficult 
for the human mind to go beyond the idea 
of a human God. 

From ancient times, however, strong pro- 
tests have been made by great thinkers against 
this human idea of God with human form 
and human attributes; but again and again 
these objections have been brushed aside by 
the vast majority of people. Xenophanes, 
the Greek philosopher, about the sixth cen- 
tury before Christ tried to overthrow this 
anthropomorphic conception of God. He 
said: "The Godhead is all eyes, all ears, all 
understanding, unmoved, undivided, calmly 
ruling everything by his thought, like men 
neither in form nor in understanding." The 
early Christians who were brought up in the 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

schools of Plato and Aristotle also deprecated 

the idea of a human God. To them the 

Supreme Being was no longer simply Elohim 

or Yahveh, the Lord of the house of Israel; 

not merely the God of Abraham, Isaac and 

Jacob, the God who walked in the garden of 

Eden in the cool of the day and ate and drank; 

He was no longer even the God "who maketh 

the clouds His chariot, who walketh upon the 

wings of the wind," but a Supreme Being who 

was infinite, indescribable, unutterable, and 

whose form could not be seen with fleshly 

eyes, whose voice could not be heard with 

mortal ear, whose size was incomprehensible. 

Clement of Alexandria says: "There is no 

name that can properly be named of Him; 

neither the one, nor the good, nor mind, nor 

absolute being, nor Father, nor creator, nor 

Lord can be the appropriate name for Him." 

And Cardinal Newman declares: "God is 

incommunicable in all His attributes." 

Not very long ago the Bishop of London 

also protested against the human God, say- 
70 



Has God any Form ? 

ing: " There is a sense in which we cannot 
ascribe personality to the unknown, absolute 
Being; for our sense of personality is of neces- 
sity compassed with limitations, and from 
these limitations we find it impossible to 
separate our conception of a person." When, 
indeed, we speak of human personality, we 
include not only age, but sex, character, 
outward appearance, the expression of the 
face and so on. 

Those who believe in a personal God with 
a human form and human attributes do not 
consider these limitations. They do not think 
for a moment: How is it possible for the 
infinite eternal Being to be confined within 
the limits of a human form, however magnified 
it may be? How is it possible for the Abso- 
lute Being to come under the limitations of 
time and space? Physical form is nothing 
but limitation in space and time and if the 
eternal and infinite God be above time and 
space, how can He have a physical form? 

Yet most of the dualistic religions teach that 
71 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

God has a form, and ask us to believe in it 
and to worship Him as one with form. How 
are we going to reconcile this self-contradic- 
tory statement that God is the infinite, eternal 
Being with a finite form? We do not find 
any solution of the difficulty in any of the 
Scriptures of the three great Semitic religions — 
Judaism, Christianity and Mahometanism. 
Of these Christianity conceives God under a 
triune form, while Judaism and Mahometan- 
ism insist on the absolute unity of the Supreme 
Being. Where is then the solution of the 
problem? If God be infinite and all-pervad- 
ing, how can He have form? 

The dualists or monotheists believe in the 
Supreme Being with a human form, but 
they say that that form is not material or 
physical but spiritual. It cannot be seen 
by the physical eye, but it can be seen by 
the spiritual eye of an enlightened soul. 
According to the dualistic system of religion 
in India, the infinite, eternal, unknowable 

Being or substance of the universe, which is 
72 



Has God any Form? 

called in Sanskrit Brahman, is the source of 

all powers and all forms. Although it is 

formless like the infinite ocean of reality or 

of absolute existence, intelligence and bliss, 

it nevertheless contains in a potential state 

all the forms of the waves that can arise in 

that eternal ocean. The water of the ocean 

has no particular form or shape; we can say 

that it is formless in one sense, but at the 

same time it can take any form when frozen 

into ice. A block of ice, for instance, can 

appear in the form of a triangle, a sphere, a 

circle, an animal or a human being. The 

same water without losing its nature can 

appear in a solidified form; and as in this 

case we are justified in saying that water, 

although formless, contains in a potential 

state all imaginable forms within itself, so 

the water of the ocean of that absolute Reality 

possesses in a potential state all the physical, 

material, mental and spiritual forms that ever 

existed, or ever will exist in future. 

The infinite, eternal Brahman does, indeed, 
73 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

appear and manifest itself with a spiritual 
form, in order to satisfy the desire of the 
devotee or worshipper. Wherever there is 
intense longing to see God, wherever there is 
unflinching devotion and unselfish love with 
the whole heart and soul, there is the mani- 
festation of the formless One to fulfil the 
desire of the devotee. It is then that the 
invisible Brahman, or the Supreme Being, 
or the Reality, manifests itself and becomes 
visible to the spiritual eye of the worshipper. 
Intense longing, unswerving devotion and 
whole-hearted love of the soul draw out from 
the infinite source any particular form which 
the devotee wishes to see and worship; they 
have the power, as it were, to condense and 
solidify the water of the ocean of Reality 
into the various forms. The spiritual form 
of the Divinity rises in the ocean of formless 
Brahman or of the absolute Godhead, floats 
there for some time, and after satisfying the 
desires of the true Bhakta or worshipper, 

merges into that ocean again. 

74 



Has God any Form ? 

These forms vary in accordance with the ideal 
of the worshipper. If a worshipper has a long- 
ing to see God in the form to which he is de- 
voted, of Jehovah or of Christ for instance, he 
must draw that out of the infinite ocean. The 
Divinity will appear in that form to satisfy 
the desire of that devotee. If he be devoted 
to the form of Buddha, or Krishna, or Rima- 
krishna, or any other human or imaginary form, 
he will see such an one with his spiritual eye 
through intense longing and love. The per- 
sonal God with a spiritual form is the objecti- 
fication, projection, manifestation of the im- 
personal ocean of Divinity. The highest of all 
such manifestations is the Iswara of Vedanta. 
He is worshipped under various names as 
Vishnu, Jehovah, Shiva, Father in heaven, or 
Allah. As all-pervading heat is imperceptible 
but becomes perceptible through friction, so 
wherever there is the intense friction of devo- 
tion and love in the soul of the worshipper, 
there is the manifestation of that infinite 

Being either in human or superhuman form. 
75 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

There have been many such instances where 
the absolute omnipresent Being manifested 
itself in various forms among all nations and 
in all countries. 

In ancient times there lived a boy saint 
who was the son of a ruling monarch. His 
name was Prahlada. His father was abso- 
lutely materialistic and atheistic in his belief, 
and could not bear the idea of a ruler greater 
and more powerful than himself. He be- 
lieved in no other ruler of the world and through 
vanity and egotism thought that he was the lord 
of all. His son Prahlada, however, was a 
born saint. From his childhood his heart 
and soul were filled with extreme faith, devo- 
tion and love for the almighty Ruler and Lord 
of the universe. He cared nothing for the 
world and found no pleasure in the luxuries 
and comforts of a princely life. They did not 
attract his mind. He always preferred to 
stay alone and had a tendency to renounce 
everything. So deeply absorbed was his 

mind in his Divine Ideal that he could not 
76 



Has God any Form? 

listen to other things, and it was impossible 
for him to obey the commands of his godless 
father. The king grew angry at his behavior, 
and one day, calling the prince to him, he asked 
him the reason of his disobedience. He 
inquired under whose instigation he was 
behaving in that way and acting rebelliously 
against him who was the lord of all. The boy 
saint replied: "The ruler of the universe, 
the lord of all nations, who is greater and 
more powerful than your majesty, has cap- 
tured my heart and soul and has inspired me 
to behave in this way." At this reply the 
king, furious with rage and anger, was ready 
to punish his son by killing him instantly. 
Drawing his sword, he cried: "How dost thou 
dare to say that thou hast a lord more powerful 
or stronger than I ? Where is thy lord ? Show 
him to me!" The boy answered: "He is 
everywhere.'' The king demanded, "Is he 
in that pillar?" Prahlada, praying to his 
Divine Ideal from the bottom of his heart and 

soul and with firm faith, rejoined: "Yes, He 
77 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

is there in that pillar." The king answered: 
"Now ask thy lord to save thee from being 
beheaded. " Thus saying, he struck the pillar 
with a giant's might and knocked it down. 
In the midst of the thundering noise of the 
crash appeared the divine figure, radiant 
with celestial glory, to protect the devotee 
of the Almighty Lord. The eyes of the 
wicked monarch were dazzled by the extraor- 
dinary brightness and celestial lustre of 
the divine form, but he could not bear the 
sight of another lord beside himself. He 
attacked the Divine manifestation and in his 
attempt to conquer the Supreme Ruler he 
fell breathless on the spot. Such was the 
power of true faith. Can any one question 
the power of true faith when Jesus said: "for 
verily I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain 
of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain 
1 remove hence from yonder place,' it shall 
remove; and nothing shall be impossible to 
you." (Matt, xvii, 20.) That faith brought 

out the manifestation of the omnipresent Lord 
78 



Has God any Form? 

from the pillar. At the sight of this wonderful 
Divine power and glory of the Almighty the 
soul of the boy saint was filled with unbounded 
joy and ecstatic happiness. He approached 
the mighty figure with awe, reverence and de- 
votion, and prostrating himself at His feet, he 
poured forth all prayers before Him to his 
heart's content, saying: "O Lord, the Al- 
mighty Ruler of the universe, Thou art indeed 
all-pervading and almighty. Thy power is 
inscrutable. To save Thy child from immi- 
nent death, to fulfil the desire of Thy true 
devotee and to punish this vain and egotistical 
earthly monarch, Thou hast shown Thy 
power and glory to all by making this Thy 
superhuman manifestation. What words are 
adequate to describe Thy majesty and Thy 
loving- kindness ? All words that we can utter 
are Thine! I am Thy child and Thy servant; 
keep me in Thy service forever and ever, 
O Lord and Father of all animate and inani- 
mate beings of the universe." 

" O Lord, Thou art the goal of all religions, 
79 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

and the sustainer, the master, the witness, the 
habitation, the refuge and the friend of all 
living creatures; Thou art the origin, disso- 
lution, support, end and the inexhaustible seed 
of the whole manifested universe. Thou art 
one, yet Thou takest many forms through 
Thy unspeakable power of Maya. I bow 
down and salute Thee. Whosoever knows 
Thee as formless and with form knows the 

eternal Truth." 

80 



Fatherhood and Motherhood 
of God. 



" I am the Father and Mother of the universe" — Bha- 
gavad Gita, ix, 17. 

" Why does the God-lover -find such pleasure in address- 
ing the Deity as Mother? Because the child is more free 
with its Mother , and consequently she is dearer to the 
child than any one else" — Life and Sayings of Rama- 
krishna, by F. Max Miiller, p. 118. 



Fatherhood and Motherhood 
of God. 

The religious history of the world shows 
that the conception of God as the Father 
of the universe first arose among the Aryan 
nations, and not among any of the Semitic 
tribes. It was in ancient India that the 
Aryans first worshipped the Supreme Being 
by addressing Him as the Father in Heaven. 
The origin of the English word "father" 
can be traced back through Latin "Pater" 
and Greek "Pitar" to Sanskrit "Pitar" 
meaning father. The Christians, however, 
believe that before the advent of Jesus the 
Christ, the fatherhood of the Almighty Being 
was unknown to the world. 

Not very long ago the famous Rt. Rev. 

Bishop Potter of New York said in one of his 
83 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

lectures: "Go to India, to Burma, to China, 
to Greece; or to Egypt or Rome and see if 
anywhere among them all you will find a 
religion with any other idea of man than 
that he is the mere creature of his governor, 
his Pharaoh, his Sultan, his Rajah, his pro- 
consul, or by whatever name you choose to 
call it." He also said: "It was Christ who 
brought an entirely new conception of the 
relation of God to men." Such statements, 
however, are neither founded upon truth nor 
supported by any historical evidence. On 
the contrary, it is a well-known fact that in 
India, from prehistoric times, the Hindu 
religion has given to man a position much 
higher than the Christian conception of his 
relation to his Maker. The ancient Vedic 
sages were the first to declare before the 
world that the human soul is not only the 
child of God but that it is essentially divine 
and in its true nature is one with the Supreme 
Being. 

According to the Hebrew religion the 
84 



Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. 

relation of God to man was like that of an 
absolute monarch to his subject, or like that 
of a master to his slave; while the religious 
history of the ancient Aryan nations testifies 
that they had risen to a much higher con- 
ception of God than as a despotic Ruler 
long before the Christian era. The Chris- 
tian missionaries and preachers have been 
trumpeting before the world for several cen- 
turies that no religion outside of Christianity 
has ever inculcated the idea of the Fatherhood 
of God and that it was Christ alone who 
brought it to men from his celestial abode. 
Moreover, they are especially eager to impress 
upon the minds of their co-religionists that 
the Hindus in particular had no conception 
of a Heavenly Father, that they never knew 
the fatherly relation of God to man. But 
those who have studied carefully the history 
of the growth of Christianity are familiar with 
the fact that the idea of the Fatherhood of 
God did not originate with Jesus the Christ 

as modern Christians believe, but existed in 
85 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

the religious atmosphere of northern Pales- 
tine from the second century B.C. as a result 
of the Hellenic influence upon Judaism of 
the worship of Jupiter. Jesus took up this 
grand Aryan idea of the Fatherhood of God 
and emphasized it in his teachings more strongly 
than any of his predecessors had done in Pal- 
estine.* It was Yahveh that Christ worshipped 
as his Heavenly Father, it was Yahveh to 
whom he prayed as the Father of the universe ; 
consequently, those who follow Christ and 
his teachings, worship their God through the 
same relation as was established by their 
Master. The worship of God is impossible 
without having some kind of relation between 
the worshipper and the object of worship. 

The relation between father and son is 
much higher than that between the creator 
and his creatures as it had existed in Judaism. 
The transition from the Judaic relation be- 
tween God and man to that of father and 
son was therefore a great step toward the 

* See p. 173: Son 0} God. 
86 



Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. 

realization of the spiritual unity of the indi- 
vidual soul and the universal Spirit. It was 
no longer an external relation to power and 
strength, but had become a kind of kinship, 
of internal blood relation such as exists between 
an earthly father and his son. There is a tie 
of love that binds a son to his father, and 
such a tie brings the individual soul nearer to 
the Creator of the universe. As the earthly 
father of an individual is ordinarily considered 
to be his creator because of his begetting him 
and bringing him into existence out of an 
invisible germ, so when the undeveloped mind 
began to think of the creation of the universe, 
it imagined that the creator was one who 
brought the world into existence and produced 
it out of nothing. Gradually the conception 
of the creator evolved into that of the father 
of the universe. 

All our conceptions of God begin with 
anthropomorphism, that is, with giving to 
God human attributes in a greatly magnified 

degree, and end in de-anthropomorphism, or 
87 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

making Him free from human attributes. At 
the first stage the human mind conceives 
of the creator as a great Being who dwells 
outside of the world which he creates, just as 
the father is separate from the son whom he 
begets. The Hebrew conception of Yahveh 
was purely anthropomorphic. Yahveh pos- 
sessed all human attributes and, dwelling in a 
heaven outside of the universe, created the 
world out of nothing, fashioned it, and after- 
ward became its governor. The same Yahveh, 
when addressed by Jesus the Christ as the 
Father in heaven, did not lose his Yahvehic 
nature; but was simply endowed with the 
fatherly aspect of Jupiter or the Greek Zeus- 
pitar. The sweet, loving and fatherly attri- 
butes of Jupiter were superadded to the stern, 
extra-cosmic Yahveh, the despotic ruler of 
the world. 

The word Jupiter, or Zeus-pitar, has a 
long history behind it, with which ordinary 
readers are not familiar, but which is known 

to a few Vedic scholars. It meant " father 
88 



Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. 

in heaven" and is a transmuted form of the 
Sanskrit Dyus-Pitar or Dyaus-Pitar, which 
very often occurs in the Rig Veda, the oldest 
of the revealed Scriptures of the world. The 
term "Dyaus" or "Dyus" originally signified 
" shining space" or "heavens," but after- 
wards it was used for the self-effulgent Spirit 
dwelling in the heavens; and "Pitar" was 
the father and the protector. In the second 
book of the Rig Veda (ch. hi, ver. 20) we 
read, u Dyaus me pita janitd ndbhi ratra" 
Here the word " Dyaus" is used, not in the 
sense of " shining heavens" as some of the 
Oriental scholars have imagined, but it refers 
to the Spiritual Source of all light as well as 
of heavens. "Pita," literally "father," here 
means "protector." The meaning of this 
verse therefore is "That shining or self-efful- 
gent Spirit who dwells in the heavens, is my 
father and protector, my progenitor or pro- 
ducer, and in him lies the source of all things." 
This was the earliest conception of the fatherly 
aspect of the Supreme Being which we find in 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

studying the Vedas. Again, in the tenth 
book of the Rig Veda, Prajapati, the Lord 
of all creatures, is addressed as "Pitar," the 
Father and the Protector (ch. v, ver. 6, 7). 

The one Supreme personal God was called 
in the Vedas "Prajapati," the Lord and 
Father of all creatures. He is most beauti- 
fully described in the one hundred and twenty- 
first hymn of the tenth book of the Rig Veda. 
The conception of a personal God which we 
find in this hymn has not been surpassed by 
the idea of a personal God among any other 
nation during the last five thousand years. 
When an ancient Vedic Seer was asked "To 
whom shall we offer our prayers and sacri- 
fices?" he replied: 

1. "In the beginning there arose the Praja- 
pati, the first-born Lord of all that exists. 
He holds by his power the heavens and the 
earth. To Him we should offer our prayers 
and sacrifices." 

2. "Prajapati, the Lord of all creatures, 

who gives life and strength to all that exists, 
90 



Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. 

from whose body emanate the individual souls 
like sparks from fire; who is the purifier of 
all souls ; whose commands all creatures revere 
and obey; whose shadow is immortality and 
mortality; to Him we should offer our prayers 
and sacrifices." 

3. "Who by His power and glory became 
the one .King (without a second) of all men, 
of beasts, nay, of all animate and inanimate 
objects; to Him we should offer our prayers 
and sacrifices. 

4. " Whose greatness is manifested in the 
snow-capped ranges of mountains and in 
the waters of the rivers and the oceans; whose 
arms are spread on all sides; to Him should 
we offer our prayers and sacrifices. 

5. "Who made the sky strong and the 
earth firm, who established heavens in their 
places, nay, the highest heaven; who measured 
the fight in the air; to Him we should offer 
our prayers and sacrifices. 

6. "To whom heaven and earth, standing 

firm by His help, look up, trembling in their 
91 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

minds, and by whose support the rising sun 
shines forth. To Him we should offer our 
prayers and sacrifices. 

7. "When the great waters went every- 
where, holding the germ and generating fire, 
thence He arose who is the sole life of the 
bright spirits (Devas). To Him we should 
offer our prayers and sacrifices. 

8. " Who is the one Lord of all living beings 
and God above all gods; who by His might 
looked over the causal waters at the time of 
dissolution. To Him we should offer our 
prayers and sacrifices. 

9. "May He not injure us, He who is the 
Creator of the earth, heavens, and bright 
and mighty waters, who is the foundation of 
truth, righteousness and justice. To Him 
we should offer our prayers and sacrifices. 

10. "O Praj&pati, no other but Thou has 

held together all these phenomena; whatever 

we desire in sacrificing to Thee, may that be 

ours; may we be the lords of all wealth." 

The same Prajapati, the true, just and 
92 



Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. 

righteous Lord of the universe and God of all 

gods, was addressed by the Vedic Sage as 

"Dyaus-Pitar" or the Father in heaven and 

the Protector of all. He is described in 

another hymn of the Rig Veda as Aditi, the 

unflinching and immutable support of the 

phenomenal universe. The word "Aditi" 

signified the motherly aspect of the Divine 

Being. "Aditi is in the heavens and in the 

illumined space that pervades between heaven 

and earth, the Mother of all Devas or gods 

as well as the Creator of all animate and 

inanimate objects. She is also the Father 

and Protector of all; She is the Son and 

the Creator; by Her grace She saves from 

sin the souls of those who worship Her. She 

gives unto Her children everything that is 

worth giving. She dwells in the forms of 

all Devas or bright spirits; She is all that is 

born and all that will be born. She is all in 

all." (Rig Veda, Book 2, ch. vi, verse 17.) 

Thus we see that in ancient India God 

was conceived as both the Father and the 
93 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

Mother of the universe centuries before 
Jesus was born. In Greece, however, the 
idea of the Fatherhood of Zeus-pitar pre- 
vailed, but his motherly aspect was denied, 
because Zeus-pitar or Jupiter was only an 
extra-cosmic personal God. As long as the 
conception of God is extra-cosmic, or as 
dwelling outside of nature, so long He appears 
to His worshippers as father alone and as 
masculine. The God of Jesus the Christ 
was the same extra-cosmic creator who was 
called Yahveh or Jehovah in Judaism and 
who was always described as masculine. 

According to the Hebrews the masculine 
element of nature possessed all activity, 
strength and power; the male principle was 
recognized as the generator, and the female 
principle of nature was thought to be lower, 
insignificant, powerless and passive. The 
female principle of nature was the producer 
and bearer of what the male principle created; 
consequently everything that represented the 

female principle was considered as unim- 
94 



Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. 

portant. This explains why womanhood was 
estimated so low by the writers of the Old 
and New Testaments, especially by the great 
apostle to the Gentiles. Even the very 
appearance and existence of woman on earth 
depended upon a man's rib, according to 
Genesis. Although the Creator was repre- 
sented by the Hebrews as masculine and all- 
powerful, when they explained the genesis 
of the world they could not deny the presence 
of the feminine element which helped the Cre- 
ator in bringing life into existence. In the 
Mosaic account of Genesis we read "And the 
spirit of God moved upon the face of the 
waters" (Gen. i, 2), which literally means 
that the Creator impregnated the waters or 
the female element of nature. And, as God, 
that is, the male element, was extra-cosmic, 
outside of nature, and possessed all activity 
and power, He became the object of worship; 
and the female element or nature was entirely 
ignored. Every Christian admits the existence 

of nature, the female principle; but she has 
95 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

never been worshipped or adored. The idea 
of Father grew stronger and stronger and the 
mother nature was left aside as passive and 
powerless, and was ultimately ignored. As 
long as the conception of God remains as 
extra-cosmic, separate from nature which is 
passive, so long will He appear as Father 
alone. The more we comprehend God as 
immanent and resident in nature, the more 
clearly we understand that God is our Mother 
as well as our Father. When we see that 
nature or the feminine principle is inseparable 
from the Supreme Being or the masculine 
element, when we realize that nature is not 
passive and powerless but the Divine Energy, 
then we understand that God is one stupendous 
Whole, in whom exist both the masculine and 
feminine principles. Then we no longer sepa- 
rate nature from God, but we recognize 
nature as a part of the manifested Divine 
Energy. 

So long as God is supposed to dwell out- 
side of nature and as father alone, He remains 
96 



Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. 

as the efficient cause of the universe, while 
nature appears to be the material cause. 
But when we realize that nature or the ma- 
terial cause is nothing but a part of the mani- 
fested Divine Energy, we then understand 
that God does not, like a carpenter or a potter, 
create or fashion the phenomena out of the 
materials which exist outside of Himself, but 
that He projects by the process of evolution 
everything out of His own body wherein 
dwell all matter and forces of the world. 

In no other Scriptures than the Vedas, in 
no other religion than that of Vedanta, is the 
personal God described as the Father and the 
Mother, the efficient and the material cause 
of the universe. Now-a-days liberal-minded 
Christians are trying to introduce the idea 
that God is both Father and Mother of the 
universe; but they do not realize that by so 
doing they are entirely upsetting the Christian 
conception of God, who dwells outside of 
nature and of the universe. The God of 

Christianity can never become both Father 
97 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

and Mother at the same time. If we address 
Him as the Mother of the universe, we have 
outgrown that conception of God which is 
taught in the Bible and in Christian theology. 
In the whole Scriptures of the Christians there 
is not one passage where Jehovah is addressed 
as the Mother. In Isaiah (ch. lxvi, 13) the 
Lord says: "As one whom his mother com- 
forteth so will I comfort you." From this 
passage, however, no fair-minded person can 
deduce that Jehovah was the mother of the 
universe. 

The Vedantic idea that God is the Mother 
as well as the Father of all harmonizes with 
the modern scientific conception of God. 
Modern science traces the whole phenomenal 
universe back to the state of eternal energy. 
The doctrine of evolution, correlation of 
forces, persistence of energy, all these clearly 
prove that the phenomena of the whole uni- 
verse and the various forces of the external 
and internal world are but the expressions of 

one eternal energy. The theory of evolution 
98 



Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. 

explains only the mode in which that eternal 
energy produces this phenomenal universe. 
Science has disproved the old theory of crea- 
tion out of nothing through the fiat of an extra- 
cosmic God, and has shown that something 
can never come out of nothing. Science 
teaches that the universe existed in a potential 
state in that energy, and gradually through 
the process of evolution the whole potentiality 
has become kinetic or actual. That eternal 
energy is not an unintelligent energy, but is 
intelligent. Wherever we cast our eyes, either 
in the external or internal world, we find 
the expression, not of a fortuitous or acci- 
dental combination of matter and mechan- 
ical forces, but of regular laws guided by 
definite purpose. This universe is not a 
chaos but a cosmos, one harmonious whole. 
It is not an aimless chain of changes which 
we call evolution, but there is an orderly 
hidden purpose at every step of evolution. 
Therefore, that energy is intelligent. We 

may call this self-existing, intelligent, eternal 
99 
LofC. 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

cosmic energy the Mother of the universe. 
She is the source of infinite forces and in- 
finite phenomena. This eternal energy is 
called in Sanskrit Prakriti (Latin procreatrix), 
the creative power of the universe. 

"Thou art the Para Prakriti or the divine 
energy of the Supreme Being. Of Thee is 
born everything of the universe, therefore 
Thou art the Mother of the universe." As 
all the forces of nature are but the manifesta- 
tions of this Divine Energy, She is called all- 
powerful. Wherever there is the expression 
of any force or power in the universe, there 
is the manifestation of the eternal Prakriti or 
the Divine Mother. It is more appropriate 
to call that Energy mother than father, because 
like a mother, that Energy holds within her 
the germ of the phenomenal universe before 
evolution, develops and sustains it, projects 
it on space and preserves it when it is born. 
She is the Mother of the Trinity, Creator, 
Preserver and Destroyer. She is the source 

of all activity. She is the Sakti, force in action. 
100 



Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. 

A creator, when deprived of his creative 
power, is no longer the creator. As the crea- 
tive power is one of the expressions of that 
eternal Energy, the Creator or Brahma is 
looked upon by the Hindus as the child of 
the universal Divine Mother, so, too, is the 
Preserver Vishnu and the Destroyer Siva. 
The Hindus have understood this Eternal 
Energy as the Mother of the universe and have 
worshipped Her from the prehistoric times 
of the Vedic period. Here we should remem- 
ber that this Divine Energy is not the same 
as the powerless and passive nature which 
was rejected and ignored by the Jews and 
the Christians. We must not mistake this 
worship of the Divine Mother for Nature- 
worship. In the Rig Veda we read: "The 
Mother Divine says, ' I am the Queen of the 
universe, the giver of all wealth and fruits of 
works. I am intelligent and omniscient. 
Although I am one, by My powers I appear 
as manifold. I cause war for protecting 

men, I kill the enemy and bring peace on earth. 
101 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

I stretch out heaven and earth. I have pro- 
duced the Father. As the wind blows by it- 
self, so I produce all phenomena by My own 
will. I am independent and responsible to 
none. I am beyond the sky, beyond this 
earth. My glory is the phenomenal universe; 
such am I by My power.' " * 

Thus the Divine Mother is described as all 
in all. We live and move and have our exist- 
ence in that Divine Mother. Who can live 
for a moment if that Eternal Energy cease 
to manifest? All our mental and physical 
activity depends on Her. She is doing what- 
ever She chooses to do. She is independent. 
She obeys none. She is the producer of 
every event that occurs in the universe. She 
makes one appear good, spiritual and divine, 
while it is She who makes another appear as 
wicked and sinful; since it is through Her 
power one performs virtuous deeds or com- 
mits sinful acts. But She is beyond good and 
evil, beyond virtue and vice. Her forces are 

* Rig Veda, x, hymn, 125. 
102 



Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. 

neither good nor evil, although they appear 
so to us when we look at them from different 
standpoints and compare them with one an- 
other. 

When that all-pervading divine energy 
manifests, it expresses itself in two sets of 
opposite forces. The one set has the ten- 
dency towards God and is called Vidyd in 
Sanskrit. The other tends towards worldli- 
ness and is called Avidyd. The one leads 
to freedom and happiness, and the other to 
bondage and suffering. The one is knowledge, 
the other is ignorance. The one is light, the 
other is darkness. Each individual soul is a 
center where these opposite forces are con- 
stantly working and fighting with one another. 
When Vidyd or the powers which lead Godward 
predominate, we advance towards God and 
become religious, spiritual and unselfish; but 
when its opposite, the Avidyd power prevails, 
we become worldly, selfish and wicked. When 
the former is predominant the latter is over- 
come, and vice versa. These powers exist in 
103 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

each individual, though they vary in the degree 
of intensity in each. The man or woman, in 
whom the former, that is, the Godward- 
leading-powers prevail, is called devotional, 
prayerful, righteous, pure in heart, unselfish. 
These qualities are but expressions of the 
Vidyd powers within us. Such higher powers 
are latent in all, even in those who do not show 
virtuous qualities. All persons can rouse 
those latent spiritual forces by practising 
devotion, prayer, righteousness, purity, unsel- 
fishness. The easiest way to attain them is 
by the worship of the Vidyd Sakti, or that 
aspect of the Divine Mother or Divine Energy 
which represents all the powers that lead to 
spiritual perfection. 

By worship or devotion is meant constant 
remembrance of that aspect. If we con- 
stantly think of the source of all spirituality 
and of all the higher powers which make 
one spiritual, surely those powers will be 
aroused in us, and we shall become spir- 
itual, righteous and unselfish. Therefore the 
104 



Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. 

Hindus worship this Vidyd Sakti. When they 
worship that aspect, they do not, however, 
deny, or ignore its opposite nature which 
leads to worldliness, but they make it subor- 
dinate to the higher Vidyd aspect. Some- 
times they think of these opposite forces 
separately, personify them and make them 
the female attendants of the Divine Mother. 
The Divine Mother has many attendants. 
All the evil forces of nature are Her attend- 
ants. She stands in the center of the universe 
radiant in Her own glory, like the sun when 
surrounded on all sides by thick, dark clouds. 
Wherever there is any expression of extraor- 
dinary righteousness and spirituality, it is a 
special manifestation of the Divine Mother, 
there is Her incarnation. The Divine Mother 
incarnates sometimes in the form of a man, 
and sometimes in the form of a woman, to 
establish order and righteousness. All men 
and women are Her children. But there is 
something more in woman. As woman rep- 
resents motherhood on earth, so all women, 
105 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

whether married or unmarried, are representa- 
tives of that Almighty Divine Mother of the 
universe. It is for this reason that women 
are so highly revered and honored by the 
Hindus. There is no country in the world 
except India where God the Supreme Being 
has been worshipped from time immemorial 
as the Divine Mother of the universe. India 
is the only country where the earthly mother 
is looked upon as the living Deity, and where 
a man learns in his childhood "One mother 
is greater than a thousand fathers." 

You have heard many stories regarding the 
condition of women in India. Most of these, 
however, are grossly exaggerated, some are 
utterly false and some are partially true. 
The familiar American story of Hindu mothers 
throwing their babes into the Ganges to 
become food for crocodiles, is unknown 
among the Hindus. In the first place, croco- 
diles cannot live in a strong current like that 
of the Ganges. I have travelled the length 

of this mighty river from its mouth to its source, 
106 



Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. 

some fifteen hundred miles, but never found 
a single instance of such an inhuman act. 
Hindu mothers, like their Christian sisters, 
may sometimes destroy their children, but 
such action is as strongly condemned in India 
as in America. These statements were heard 
by me for the first time after coming to Amer- 
ica, though tales and pictures to this effect 
have been quite common in this country in 
books for the young.* There is no other 
country " Where every living mother" — as 
Sir Monier Monier Williams says — "is ven- 
erated as a kind of deity by her children, 
where every village or city has its special 
guardian mother, called (in Sanskrit) Mata." * 
It is extremely difficult for a Western mind 
to grasp exactly what the Hindus mean when 
they say that every woman is a representative 
of the Divine Mother. A very simple illustra- 
tion will give you an idea of the respect the 
Hindus have for women. In Sanskrit when 
two names are used together, the rule of 

* u Hinduism and Brahmanism," p. 222. 
107 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

grammar is that the more honorable should 
stand first. In Sanskrit we say women and 
men, not men and women; instead of father 
and mother, we say mother and father; instead 
of husband and wife, wife and husband, 
because a woman is always more honorable 
than a man. In India wives do not adopt 
their husbands' names, they do not merge 
their individuality into that of their husbands 
as women do in the West, but they keep 
their own name separate. If a wife's name 
be Radha, and her husband's name be Krishna, 
and if we say them together, we would say 
Radha-Krishna and never Krishna-RadM. 
The wife's name must be said first. So we 
say Sit^-Rama; Sita is the wife and R&ma 
is the husband. Again, when God incar- 
nates in a man form, as in Krishna or R&ma, 
the wife of such an incarnation will be 
worshipped as the incarnation of the 
Mother. The wife will be worshipped first 
and then the husband. A Western mind 

does not easily appreciate the wonderful 
108 



Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. 

reverence for womanhood which the Hindus 
have. 

The Divine Mother is the personal God, 
the same as Iswara in Sanskrit; and Brahman 
or the Absolute Substance or the Universal 
Spirit is the impersonal Being. Brahman is 
formless, nameless and without any attributes. 
It is the ocean of absolute intelligence, exist- 
ence and bliss. It has no activity. It is the 
Godhead of Fichte, the Substantia of Spinoza. 
It transcends all phenomena. Before phe- 
nomenal manifestation Divine Energy rested 
on the bosom of that ocean of Absolute Being 
in a potential state. It is the dormant state 
of activity somewhat like our deep sleep 
state when all activity is latent. As in deep 
sleep all the mental and physical powers 
exist in us in an unmanifested condition and 
nothing is lost, so, before the beginning of 
the cosmic evolution, all the phenomenal 
forces of the universe remained dormant in 
that Energy. There were no phenomena, 

no manifestation of any powers whatever. 
109 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

Again, as in our waking state all the latent 
powers manifest and we are able to walk, 
move, talk and are tremendously active, so, 
when a portion of that Impersonal Being 
wakes up, as it were, and manifests the latent 
cosmic powers of the sleeping Energy, the 
evolution of the cosmic Energy begins and 
the Impersonal Being appears as the Creator 
of the universe and its Preserver. 

The Impersonal Being is then called per- 
sonal, on account of that manifested energy. 
According to the Hindus the impersonal Brah- 
man is neither masculine nor feminine. But 
the personal God is masculine and feminine 
both in one. Energy and Being are insepa- 
rable in the personal God. As pure Being 
without energy cannot produce any phenom- 
ena and as Energy possesses all activity and 
is the mother of all forces and phenomena, 
the personal God is most appropriately called 
the Mother of the universe. As fire and its 
burning power or heat are inseparable, so 

Being and Energy are inseparable and one. 
no 



Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. 

Those who worship the masculine aspect of 
God, in reality worship the male child born 
of that Divine Mother. Because the activity, 
strength and power which make one mascu- 
line, owe their origin to that Divine Energy. 
But those who worship the Divine Mother 
worship the Whole — all gods, all angels and 
all spirits that exist in the universe. 

The wonderful effect of this conception of 
the Motherhood of God is to be found in the 
daily life of almost every Hindu woman and 
man. A Hindu woman thinks that she is a 
part of the Divine Mother, nay one with Her. 
She looks upon all men and women of the world 
as her own children. She thinks of herself 
as the blessed Mother of the world. How 
can such a woman be unkind to anybody? 
Her pure motherly love flows towards all men 
and women equally. There is no room for 
any impure thought or feeling or passion in 
such a heart. That perfect motherly feeling 
makes her ultimately live like the Divine 

Mother on earth. Her ideal God in human 
111 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

form is her own child. She worships the in- 
carnation of God as her most beloved child. 
Just as Mary was the Mother of Jesus, so 
the Hindu women in India often look upon 
themselves as the mother of Krishna, the 
Hindu Christ, or of Rama, another incarna- 
tion. Christian mothers, perhaps, will be 
able to appreciate this to a certain extent. 
If a Christian mother thinks that she is Christ's 
mother and loves Him as she loves her own 
child, the effect will be wonderful. She will 
then understand what Divine Motherhood 
is. The Hindus think this the easiest way 
for women to attain to that love which makes 
them unselfish and divine. A mother can 
sacrifice everything for her child; she naturally 
loves the child without seeking any return, 
though there are mothers who do not possess 
pure, unselfish motherly love. A true mother, 
however, loves her child above everything. 
If such a child be an incarnation of God Him- 
self, how easy it will be for the mother to 

attain to the highest goal of religion. I know 
112 



Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. 

a lady in India who became a widow when she 
was young. She did not marry again. She 
was not like the ordinary woman of the world 
who thinks that a husband is essential to her 
happiness and that marriage is the highest 
ideal of life. She lived the pure life of a nun 
and worshipped Krishna as her own child. 
She became so advanced in spirituality that 
now hundreds of educated men and women 
of high rank in Calcutta come to see her, to re- 
ceive spiritual instruction from her. They kiss 
the dust of her feet as devout Roman Catho- 
lics kiss the feet of the statue of Mary, they 
revere her and call her the Mother of God, 
Mother of Krishna, the Shepherd. She is still 
living near Calcutta. She feels in herself the 
presence of the blessed Mother of the universe. 
Another wonderful result of this concep- 
tion of God as the Mother of the universe, is 
that when a man worships God as his mother, 
he always thinks of himself as a child in its 
Mother's arms. As a child does not fear any- 
thing when it is near its mother, so the wor- 
113 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

shipper of the Divine Mother is never afraid 
of anything. He sees the Blessed Mother 
everywhere. In every woman he sees the 
manifestation of his Eternal Mother. Con- 
sequently, every woman on earth is his mother. 
He conquers all lust and sense desires. He 
sees woman in a different light. He worships 
every woman mentally. 

I have seen a man who lived on this earth like 
a living child of the Divine Mother, always pro- 
tected and taken care of by Her. He worshipped 
God as the Mother of the universe. Through 
that worship he became pure, righteous and 
spiritual. He used to say "O, my Mother, 
Thou art all in all. Thou art my Guide, 
my Leader and Strength." His Divine Mother 
showed him the true nature of man and woman. 
He bowed down before all women, young, 
mature and old, and said to them — "You are 
the living representatives of my Divine Mother 
on earth." How can a child have any other 
relation to one who is the same as its real 

mother? By this kind of devotion he con- 
114 



Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. 

quered all lust and worldliness. His child-like, 
whole-souled and rapturous self- consecration 
to the Divine Mother is a landmark in the 
religious history of India. His whole life, 
which was the personification of purity, self- 
control, self-resignation and filial love to the 
Divine Mother, stands as a mighty testimony 
to the reality and effectiveness of the worship 
of God as the Mother of the universe. When 
he sang the praises of the Divine Mother, 
he gave life to every word he uttered, and 
no soul could hear him without being moved 
to tears by deep devotional feelings, without 
realizing that this wonderful child was in direct 
communion with his Divine Mother. His 
Divine Mother showed him that each woman 
was Her incarnation, so he worshipped and 
honored all women as a son might worship 
his own mother. Some Western people may 
laugh at such reverence, but a Hindu is ex- 
tremely proud of it. He knows how to honor 
a woman. Professor Max Muller was much 

impressed with the wonderful life of this 
115 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

great sage, and recently published his life and 
sayings.* He was once asked: "If we are 
the children of your Divine Mother, why does 
She not take care of us? Why does She not 
come to us and take us up in Her arms?" 
The sage replied: "A mother has several 
children. To one she has given a doll, to 
another some candy, to the third a music 
box, according as each one likes. Thus when 
they begin to play and are absorbed, they 
forget their mother; she in the meanwhile 
looks after her household work. But the 
moment any one of them gets tired of the play, 
and, throwing aside the plaything, cries for 
the mother, 'Mamma, mamma dear!' she 
runs quickly to him, takes him up in her arms, 
kisses him often and often and caresses him. 
So, oh man! being absorbed with the play- 
things of the world you have forgotten your 
Divine Mother; when you get tired of your 
play, and, throwing aside the toys, you cry 

* " Life and Sayings of Ramakrishna," by F. 
Max Muller. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. 
116 



Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. 

for Her sincerely and with the simplicity of a 
child, She will come at once and take you up 
in Her arms. Now you want to play and 
She has given you all that you need at pres- 
ent." Each one of us will see the Divine 
Mother sooner or later. The Mother is 
always taking care of us and protecting us 
whether we feel it or not, whether we realize 
it or not. 

The Vedanta philosophy recognizes both 
the fatherhood and motherhood of the personal 
God and teaches us that through the worship 
of either of these aspects the highest ideal of 
religion can be reached. The Prajapati or 
the Lord of all creatures of the Vedas is 
called "Iswara" in Vedanta. Some worship 
Him as the Father, while others call Him 
Divine Mother. But He is sexless and 
therefore both Father and Mother of all. 
Those who address Him as the Father say: 

" O Lord, Thou art the Father of the uni- 
verse, of all animate and inanimate objects. 

Thou art worshipped by all. Thou art 
117 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

greater than the greatest; O Thou of incom- 
parable power, none in the heavens and 
earth is equal to Thee, how can any one be 
greater? O Lord, as a father forgiveth his 
son, a friend his dear friend, a lover his be- 
loved, even so do Thou forgive me." 

Those who worship His motherly aspect 
pray to Her, saying: 

"O Mother Divine, Thou art the eternal 
energy, the infinite source of the universe. 
Thy powers manifest in the infinite variety 
of names and forms. Being deluded by the 
power of ignorance we forget Thee and take 
pleasure in the playthings of the world. But 
when we come to Thee, take Thy refuge and 
worship Thee, Thou makest us free from igno- 
rance and worldliness, and givest us eternal 
happiness by keeping us, Thine own children, 

on Thy bosom," 

118 



The Relation of Soul to God. 



"The soul enchained is 'man* and free from chain 
is 'God,'" — life and Sayings of Ramakrishna, by 
F. Max Muller, p. 145. 



The Relation of Soul to God. 

A clear understanding of man's relation 
to God is a matter of momentous importance 
to students of philosophy and religion and to 
all seekers of Truth. From very ancient times 
all the best thinkers, prophets and the great 
religious leaders of the world, whether of the 
East or of the West, have endeavored to explain 
our relation to God and to the universe. Out 
of those explanations have arisen various 
schools of philosophy and different systems 
of religious beliefs among the different nations 
of the world. 

Every philosophy and every religion, ancient 
or modern, has arrived at certain conclusions 
in its attempt to describe the relation which 
each individual bears to God. All such con- 
clusions, of course, presuppose the existence 
121 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

of God, and depend upon the nature of our 
conception of God as well as of the human 
soul. Those who deny the existence of God 
and hold that we are but mere accidental 
appearances in the mechanical process of the 
blind forces of nature which are acting aim- 
lessly upon dead matter, think that it is loss 
of time and waste of energy to discuss such 
useless and absurd topics. They would rather 
devote their energy to obtaining the best 
things of the Godless world for the comforts 
of the soulless body. They do not believe 
in the existence of any such thing as soul, 
mind or spirit apart from the functions of the 
body. When the body dies everything comes 
to an end. As with the body, so it is with 
the material universe. 

Such thinkers are not the products of the 
Twentieth Century alone, but they are as old 
as the appearance of man upon earth. In 
ancient India this class of thinkers existed 
side by side with the believers in the individual 

soul of man and in God, as numerously as we 
122 



The Relation of Soul to God. 

find them to-day among the most cultivated 
minds of the West. Those ancient material- 
ists, like the modern agnostics and atheists, 
making sense perception the standard of 
their knowledge of things, denied the exist- 
ence of that which they could not perceive by 
their senses. But the other class of thinkers, 
who went below the surface of sense percep- 
tions into the realm of the invisible, weighed 
these materialistic arguments, pointed out 
their fallacies, and ultimately established 
through logical and scientific reasoning, the 
existence of the individual soul of man as 
well as of the soul of the universe, or God, 
and described their mutual relation. 

These thinkers can be divided into three 
classes: First, the dualists; secondly, the qual- 
ified non-dualists, and thirdly, the non-dualists, 
or monists. The Western dualists believe in 
an extra-cosmic personal God, who creates 
the universe out of nothing, fashions it, gives 
names to the phenomena, and afterwards 

governs it. According to them, God, the 
123 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

creator and governor of the universe, is eter- 
nally separate from the world and from all 
living creatures, just as a potter is separate 
from the pot which he makes or as a carpenter 
who stands always outside of the table or 
chair which he makes. The dualists believe 
in a God who has human attributes infinitely 
magnified. He is all-wise, merciful, just 
and all-powerful. Some of the dualists go 
so far as to give human form to God, as we 
find in the conception of Jehovah among 
the Hebrews and the orthodox Christians. 
In the Old Testament, Jehovah is described 
as walking with Adam in the Garden of Eden. 
It is said: "And they heard the voice of the 
Lord God walking in the garden in the cool 
of the day, and Adam and his wife hid them- 
selves from the presence of the Lord God 
amongst the trees of the garden. " (Genesis hi, 
8.) Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, 
and seventy of the elders of Israel saw Him. 
The nobles not only saw but they did eat and 

drink with Him. (Exodus xxiv, 9, 11.) Moses 
124 



The Relation of Soul to God. 

saw Jehovah's back. Jehovah ate with Abra- 
ham under the oaks at Mamre. (Genesis xviii, 
i, 8.) God was pleased with the sweet savor 
of Noah's sacrifice. He possessed human 
appetites. He walked with Noah. 

The same Jehovah with a human form and 
human qualities and with a human personality 
is the ideal God of the orthodox Christian 
monotheists of to-day. They believe in Je- 
hovah as sitting on a throne somewhere in 
the heavens, with eyes red with anger and 
revenge, and holding a rod, ever ready to 
punish the wicked with eternal fire. From 
many of the orthodox pulpits the same God is 
preached to-day, as He was in the days of the 
past. The relation of man to such a personal, 
or rather human God, with human attri- 
butes, is like that of a creature to his creator, 
of a subject to his king, or of a slave to his 
master. As the duty of a subject is to obey 
implicitly the commands of his king, or ruler, 
or governor, so every man's duty is to obey 

the commands of the Governor of the uni- 
125 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

verse, otherwise he will be punished. Similar 
relation of man to the extra-cosmic personal 
Ruler of the universe is to be found in most 
of the dualistic or monotheistic religions of 
the world. All the religions of Europe and 
Asia which are dualistic or monotheistic 
teach that our relation to God is that of a 
creature to his creator, or of the governed 
to the governor. 

Although man is said to be created in 
God's image in Genesis, yet it is generally 
understood that he cannot have any relation 
higher than that of a creature to his creator. 
It simply means that the first man, being 
the image of God, possessed at first some 
of the divine qualities before he was tempted 
by Satan. Although the Christians believe 
that Jesus the Christ was the son of God, 
and that God is the father of the universe, 
yet according to them, an ordinary mortal 
cannot be called the son of God in the same 
sense as Jesus of Nazareth was, because he 
was an exception to the general rule. Whether 

126 



The Relation of Soul to God. 

Jesus ever meant that he was the only begotten 
son of God exclusive of any other mortal, is 
a problem yet to be solved. If every individual 
be a true image or the son of God, then the 
question arises, why should He punish His own 
son so mercilessly with eternal fire as is de- 
scribed in the parable of the marriage of the 
king's son: "Then said the king to the serv- 
ants, bind him hand and foot and take him 
away and cast him into outer darkness; 
there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth; 
for many are called but few are chosen." 
(Matt, xxii, 13, 14.) Again, in the saying: 
"Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how 
can ye escape the damnation of hell?" (Matt. 
xxiii, 33.) Thus, according to popular Chris- 
tianity, as it is understood and preached in 
the orthodox churches, man's relation to God 
is not like that of His image, nor like that of a 
son to his loving Father, but like that of a 
subject to his despotic monarch, Christ being 
the only begotten son of God. The Christians 

believe that God creates the soul out of nothing 
127 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

and implants it in the human form at the time 
of its birth. As long as there is preached 
the idea of the creation of the universe and 
of man out of nothing by an extra-cosmic 
personal God with human attributes, so long 
will our relation to God remain like that of 
a creature to his creator or of the governed 
to his governor. 

In India too there are dualists. They 
believe in an extra-mundane personal God 
who is the repository of all blessed qualities, 
who is omnipotent, omniscient, and all- 
loving; who creates the universe, not out of 
nothing, but out of the material of nature, 
which is eternal. God is the efficient cause 
of the universe and nature is the material 
cause. They do not believe that the human 
soul comes into existence all of a sudden and 
has a beginning, as the Christians do, but 
that it existed in the past and will exist in 
future from eternity to eternity. They say 
that as nature is eternal so are the individual 

souls. Each soul after remaining potentially 
128 



The Relation of Soul to God. 

in nature for some time, comes out of the causal 
state at the beginning of a new cycle of crea- 
tion or evolution, and manifests in gross forms, 
one after another, going through the different 
grades of evolution according to its desires 
and tendencies, until it reaches perfection. 
After reading the New Testament one cannot 
get any definite conception of the nature of 
the human soul, nor of its destiny, but in the 
dualistic system of India one learns that the 
human soul is like an infinitesimal particle of 
nature containing the divine light of intelli- 
gence and divine power in an infinitely small 
degree, whose duty is to serve God through 
prayers, good deeds, good thoughts and love. 
God loves all, and He can be loved in return. 
Those who worship Him through unswerving 
devotion and unselfish love obtain freedom 
from the dark side of nature; that is, from 
the bondages of ignorance, selfishness, suffering, 
misery and all other imperfections; and after 
death they live a life of bliss and perfection 
forever in the presence of the eternal personal 

129 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

God. This is salvation according to the dual- 
ists in India. . They do not mean by salvation 
going to heaven, but on the contrary, hold 
that heaven is a realm where one goes to 
enjoy the results of one's good deeds, and at 
the end of such a period of celestial enjoyment 
one comes back to earth and is born again. 
Each soul is bound to attain this salva- 
tion, sooner or later. Those who do wicked 
deeds reap the results of their actions 
and thoughts, not by going to any place 
of eternal fire and punishment, but by being 
born again and again until they reach the 
state of spirituality, devotion and righteous- 
ness. The monotheists in India do not be- 
lieve that God punishes any one, as He is the 
embodiment of Divine love. Nor do they 
believe in eternal suffering, nor in any Satan 
or creator of evil. But they do believe in a 
temporary suffering of the wicked, which is 
the reaction of their own wicked acts. They 
do not blame God or charge Him with par- 
tiality, they do not blame Satan, but they 
130 



The Relation of Soul to God. 

take upon their own shoulders the whole 
burden of responsibility. These dualists be- 
lieve that wherever there is life there is the 
manifestation of the divine light of intelli- 
gence, however small it may be, however 
imperfect the expression of intelligence may 
be. From the minutest insect up to the high- 
est gods (Devas) or angels, or bright spirits, 
each individual life is filled with a ray of that 
Divine Sun. They sometimes compare God 
with a gigantic magnet and the individual 
soul with the point of a needle, and say as a 
magnet attracts a needle so the great God 
attracts the individual souls toward Him 
through love, and magnetizes them as it were 
by His divine grace and power. Although 
they believe that each soul is separate from 
God and from other souls, yet its relation to 
God is like that of a ray to the sun or of a 
spark to fire. Their conception of the human 
soul is with attributes, with qualities and char- 
acter, with mind, intellect, sense-powers, and 

the finer particles of ethereal matter which 
131 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

give foundation to grosser physical forms. 
In short, it is the same as the individual ego, 
as we call it, or the spiritual body as it is called 
in the New Testament. According to these 
dualists, God can be worshipped by man 
through various relations, such as by calling 
Him master, or father, or mother, or brother, 
or friend, or son, or husband. These relations 
depend upon the nature and characteristics 
of the worshipper. Some like to think of 
themselves as servants of God, others as 
friends, or brothers, or sons. They say, as 
the same man in a household can be the master 
in relation to his servants, the father in relation 
to his children, a friend, a brother, or a hus- 
band in relation to his wife, so the same God 
can appear in all those various relations to 
different devotees according to their modes 
of thinking. Such is the conception of the 
individual soul and its relation to God accord- 
ing to the dualistic thinkers of India. 

Next to the dualistic conception of God 

comes that of the qualified non-dualists. 
132 



The Relation of Soul to God. 

These thinkers go a little deeper than the dual- 
ists. Starting from the dualistic standpoint 
they go a step further toward the realiza- 
tion of Truth and of man's relation to God. 
According to them, God is no longer extra- 
cosmic, no more outside of and separate from 
the universe, but He is intra-cosmic. He is 
no longer governor from the outside, but 
Antarydmin, inter- ruler. He is immanent 
and resident in nature. He interpenetrates 
every particle of the universe. The physical 
universe is His gross physical body. He has 
infinite eyes, infinite ears, and infinite organs 
of other senses. He sees through the eyes of 
all living creatures of the universe. He hears 
through all the ears that exist in the universe. 
He has infinite heads. The wind is His breath. 
His mind is the sum total of individual minds, 
or in other words, the Cosmic Mind. His 
intellect is the Cosmic intellect. His soul is 
the Cosmic Ego, or the soul of the universe. 
He is no longer the creator of the universe, 

or one who fashions the materials of nature 
133 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

and gives names and forms to the phenomena 
from outside like a potter or a carpenter. 
He is not the efficient cause alone, as the 
dualists maintain, but He is both efficient 
and material cause of the universe. He cre- 
ates, that is, He projects into the physical 
space the phenomenal forms out of nature or 
divine energy which is in His body. He is 
the one living Being in the universe. He is 
the one stupendous Whole, and we are but 
parts. 

In that process of projection or evolution 
of nature, infinite numbers of individual souls 
which existed in His body from the begin- 
ningless past, come out on the physical plane, 
take forms, play their parts according to their 
desires, and fulfil the purpose of life by going 
through the process of evolution. Each indi- 
vidual soul is like a spark which emanates 
from the huge bonfire of God, and lives in and 
through God, but it cannot be called God. 
God dwells everywhere. He pervades the 

universe and nature, and yet He transcends 
134 



The Relation of Soul to God. 

them both. He is infinite but personal, with- 
out any human form. The qualified non- 
dualists say that God cannot be confined to 
any form, because every form is a limitation 
in space by time, while God is unlimited by 
space or time. He is beyond space and time. 
Still, He can appear in various forms to 
satisfy the desires of His worshippers. Our 
body is a part of God's body, our mind is a 
part of the divine or universal mind, our will is 
a part of the universal or cosmic will. This 
is called the qualified non-dualistic concep- 
tion of God, because it looks at unity as quali- 
fied by variety. That is, God is one, the uni- 
verse and human souls are one in God, yet 
each retains its own separate individuality. 
God is like a tree and we are like branches 
thereof. It reminds me of the simile of the 
vine and its branches which Jesus the Christ 
gave to show man's relation to God. The 
same idea underlies His saying, "My Father 
is greater than I." According to this class 

of thinkers the individual soul possesses all 
135 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

the qualities of the human ego. As our ego 
has mind, intellect, sense-power, memory, 
and is limited by other egos, so is the soul. 
After the death of the body the soul contracts 
its qualities within itself, and at the time of 
its birth it expands those latent powers. Our 
ego or soul is a part of the cosmic ego, or the 
soul of the universe, or God. 

Next to these comes the class of monistic 
or non-dualistic thinkers. They do not stop 
where the qualified non-dualists have stopped, 
but they push their investigations still further, 
and analyze the nature of the individual soul 
or ego, and ultimately discover the unchange- 
able essence of the ego. They are the seekers 
of the unchangeable reality of the universe. 
In their search they will not stop until they 
have reached that Truth which is immutable, 
eternal and one. They adopt the scientific 
methods of analysis, observation and experi- 
ment, and apply them to solve the subtlest 
and most abstract problems. Analyzing the 

nature of the ego, they find that it cannot be 
136 



The Relation of Soul to God. 

the unchangeable reality or immutable Truth, 
because the mind, with its various modifications, 
such as intellect, memory, etc., is constantly 
changing. After patient research and con- 
tinuous struggle to know the ultimate Truth, 
these great monistic sages realized that the 
ego, or the individual soul, is nothing but a 
changeful receptacle of a still subtler sub- 
stance, which is unchangeable and eternal. 
They called it the Atman in Sanskrit. 

There is no word in the English language 
which conveys the meaning of this Atman. 
It is much finer than ego or the living soul 
of the individual. Atman is the uncondi- 
tioned reality in man; and the living soul or 
the individual ego is the subtle covering of 
the Atman, like the globe that covers the 
light of a lamp. That Atman is not a part 
of the universal ego, but it is one with the un- 
conditioned Reality of the universe, which 
is called in Sanskrit Brahman, or the All- 
pervading Spirit, or the Absolute. Some- 
times it is called Paramatman, which was 
137 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

translated by Ralph Waldo Emerson as 
Over-Soul. It is finer than the Cosmic Ego 
or God. It is sexless, neither masculine nor 
feminine. It is sometimes translated by the 
Oriental scholars as the Self. But Self is a 
confusing word. Some people mistake it 
for the Anglo-Saxon self, which acts and 
progresses, and which is another name for 
the ego. 

According to the non-dualistic conception 
of the true nature of man, the Atman or the 
Self, or the spiritual essence of man, is the 
same as the Brahman, the spiritual or divine 
essence of the universe. The relation of the 
true nature of man to God is no longer like 
that of a creature to the Creator, nor like 
that of a son to his father, nor like that of a 
part to the whole, but it is absolute oneness 
on the highest spiritual plane. The Atman, 
or the divine nature of man, is the same as 
the absolute divinity of the Cosmos. On 
that highest spiritual plane there is no dis- 
tinction, no idea of separation: no idea of 
138 



The Relation of Soul to God. 

creation. All ideas of separateness, all differ- 
entiations of phenomenal names and forms, 
merge into the absolute ocean of reality which 
is unchangeable, eternal and one. The essence 
of the Creator is infinite, and it interpenetrates 
the phenomenal forms as the external space 
pervades every particle of atoms of the phe- 
nomenal world. That essence is like the all- 
pervading background of the phenomenal 
appearances. Phenomena are like the waves 
in the ocean of Infinite Reality. Individual 
souls are like so many bubbles in that ocean 
of Absolute Existence. As a bubble rises 
on the surface of the ocean, takes a form, 
lives there, comes near other bubbles, lives in 
a group for some time, moves in the company 
of others, changes its size, perhaps, and goes 
down again; so the individual soul rises in 
that ocean of infinite existence, appears in 
various forms, passes through the different 
stages of evolution, and lives there for ever 
and ever, sometimes as manifested and at 

other times as unmanifested. The light of 
139 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

intelligence in the soul or ego is due to the 
reflection of the Atman or Divine Spirit on 
the mirror of the heart of the ego or soul. 
Therefore the soul is called the image or 
reflection of the Atman or Divine Spirit. 

This idea is beautifully expressed in one 
of the Upanishads: "In the cave of our 
heart have entered the two — the Atman or 
the Divine Spirit, and the individual ego or 
soul. Dwelling on the highest summit, or the 
ether of the heart, the one witnesses the other, 
while the soul drinks the rewards of its own 
works. The wise men and sages describe 
the one as the light, and the other as the 
reflection, image or shadow." (Katha Upani- 
shad, ch. hi, verse i.) You will notice here 
what a deep meaning lies at the back of the 
expression, "Man is the image of God." 
The ancient Vedic sages used the same expres- 
sion in a sense which many of the best philoso- 
phers of the Western world have failed to 
grasp or comprehend. Thus the most ancient 
Monistic sages explained the highest relation 

140 



The Relation of Soul to God. 

of the individual soul to Atman or Divine 
Spirit, by calling it the reflection or image of 
the Self-effulgent Light of God. But as a 
reflection cannot exist independent of the 
light whose reflection it is, so the soul of man 
cannot exist independent of Atman. There- 
fore the true nature of the soul is Atman, 
the divine and real spirit which cannot be 
divided into parts and is One Absolute Source 
of existence, intelligence and bliss. Such is 
the monistic or non-dualistic explanation of 
the relation of the soul to God. 

Vedanta philosophy recognizes these three 
explanations. It says that the relation of 
the soul to God varies as the conception of 
the individual soul and of God becomes finer 
and higher. Starting from the gross form of 
body, when a real and earnest seeker after 
Truth marches onward toward the Absolute, 
he passes through all the intermediate stages 
until he reaches that state of divine communion 
where he realizes the oneness of the Atman, 

or the true nature of man with Brahman, the 
141 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

cosmic Divine essence, or the Absolute Real- 
ity of the universe. Then he declares, I am 
Brahman, I am He, I am in the sun, in the 
moon, in stars; I am one with the All-per- 
vading Reality; or as Jesus the Christ said, 
"I and my Father are one." He does not 
use the word "I" in its ordinary sense of ego 
or human personality, but in the sense of 
Atman, or Divine essence. Jesus was a dual- 
ist when He prayed to His Father in heaven, 
and he was a monist when He said, "I and 
my Father are one," "The kingdom of heaven 
is within you." A Vedanta philosopher or 
sage after realizing that absolute oneness on 
the highest spiritual plane of the Atman, says, 
when he returns to the plane of relativity and 
phenomena: 

"O Lord, when I think of my body, I am 
Thy servant and Thou art my Master; when 
I look at my soul, I am Thy part and Thou 
art the one stupendous Whole; but when I 
realize my true nature, I am divine and one 
with Thee, the Absolute Spirit. Such is my 

conception of my relation to Thee." 
. 142 



What is an Incarnation of God? 



"The Lord says: 'Whenever religion declines and 
irreligion prevails I manifest myself to protect the right- 
eous, to destroy evil and to establish true religion. 9 " — 
Bhagavad Gita iv, 7, 8. 



What is an Incarnation of God? 

Two great religions of the world advocate 
the belief that God, the supreme Ruler of 
the universe, incarnates in human form to 
help mankind — the> one is Christianity, the 
other is the religion of Vedanta which pre- 
vails in India. 

Christianity, believing in the existence of 
one personal God who is the creator, governor 
and Father of the universe, teaches that this 
heavenly Father incarnated Himself in human 
form as Jesus the Christ to show His love, 
His mercy and kindness for His suffering chil- 
dren as well as to save the world from eternal 
perdition. It may be interesting to many 
to know how this doctrine of divine incarna- 
tion, unknown to the earliest Christians of 

the first century after Christ, gradually grew 
145 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

and developed into its present form. Readers 
of ecclesiastical history are well aware of 
the fact that no problem troubled the 
minds of the founders of the Christian church 
and of Christian theology so much as this 
one of the divine incarnation of Jesus the 
Christ. During the early periods of church 
history, indeed, no other question was con- 
sidered to be of such vital importance as that 
of the heavenly Father's incarnation in the 
form of Jesus of Nazareth. Although for 
many of the uneducated masses this problem 
appears to have been satisfactorily solved by 
the wonderfully subtle and apparently logical 
arguments of certain priests and theologians, 
still it is not unknown to the educated classes 
that the acceptance of their solution depended 
largely upon priestly power, upon anathema 
and upon the persecution. of those who refused 
to receive these arguments as the only correct 
solution of the problem. 

Let us go back for a moment to that time 

when Constantine the Great settled the 
146 



What is an Incarnation of God ? 

disputes of the bishops regarding the incarna- 
tion of the Supreme Being in the form of the 
Son of Man. In the first place we should 
remember that the modern Christian idea of 
divine incarnation is founded upon the belief 
in the Trinitarian doctrine of the Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost in the memorable text 
of the First Epistle of John: "For there are 
three that bear record in heaven, the Father, 
the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these 
three are one " (ch. v. 7). Before the doc- 
trine of the divine incarnation of Jesus the 
Christ was established and accepted by the 
church, the early Christians believed in the 
Trinity and constantly discussed the most 
subtle and profound questions concerning 
the nature, generation, distinction and qualities 
of the three divine persons of the mysterious 
triad. At that time the majority of Chris- 
tian thinkers believed in Jesus of Nazareth 
as the son of God, but they did not dare de- 
clare that he was "God himself in human 

form/' the second principle of the blessed 
147 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

Trinity. It was Justin Martyr, a Christian 
convert of the Platonic school and a believer 
in the Platonic doctrine of the Trinity, who 
about the middle of the second century for the 
first time promulgated the idea that Jesus 
the Christ, the son of God, was the second 
person in the Triune Deity and the creator 
of the universe. He is the earliest writer to 
whom the origin of this idea can be traced, 
and he did not ascribe his opinion to the 
Scriptures but to the special favor of God. 

The Trinitarian controversies which first 
broke out in the Christian schools of Alexan- 
dria in Egypt, the land of Trinities, took a 
new form during the time of Constantine the 
Great, the chief point of debate being to define 
the relation of the son to the Father. The 
church of Alexandria was the most powerful 
of all the churches at this period, and it was 
ruled by Trinitarian bishops who took part 
in all these discussions. One of the most 
prominent candidates for the office of bishop 

was Alius, the celebrated originator of the 
148 



What is an Incarnation of God ? 

Arian doctrines and a Presbyter of the Alexan- 
drian church. He and his followers main- 
tained, in opposition to the other bishops, 
that the son of God was merely a creature or 
a created being, that there was a time when 
he did not exist. He said: "If the Father 
begat the Son, he that was begotten had a 
beginning in existence; from this it is evi- 
dent that there was a time when the Son was 
not in being, it therefore follows that he had 
his existence from nothing." This argument 
was the strongest of all the blows which were 
given to the Trinitarian doctrine, as well as 
the most potent against the divinity of Jesus 
the Christ, because it evidently denied the 
co- eternity of the Father and the Son by 
proving the subordination of the Son to the 
Father, and, in consequence, inequality be- 
tween them. It also indirectly implied that 
there was a time when the blessed Trinity did 
not exist. 
The question was vehemently discussed 

again and again in public debates by bishops 
149 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

and Christians, and gradually the strife 
spread so far that the Jews and pagans amused 
themselves by giving theatrical representa- 
tions of the contest on the stage, the point 
of their burlesques being the equality of the 
age of the father and son. The violence of 
the controversy at last reached the point 
where imperial force was needed for the deci- 
sion. Emperor Constantine, being referred 
to, summoned the council of Nicea in 327 a.d. 
and settled the dispute of the bishops by 
formulating the famous Nicean creed and at- 
taching to it the anathema: "The holy Catholic 
and Apostolic Church anathematizes those 
who say that there was a time when the Son 
of God was not, that before he was begotten, 
he was not, and that he was made out of 
nothing or out of another substance or essence 
and is created or changeable or alterable." 

In this manner the so-called satisfactory 
solution of that most bewildering problem 
of the divine incarnation of Jesus was arrived 

at, and it was accepted, not because of the 
150 



What is an Incarnation of God? 

unanimous opinion of all the members of the 
council, but simply because the majority of 
the bishops were in favor of it. After this 
decision Arius was excommunicated for his 
heretical ideas, while his followers, who were 
quite numerous, were cruelly persecuted and 
their writings destroyed. Since that time 
the bishops and clergy have been forced to 
accept the doctrine of the Trinity as also that 
of the incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth. 

Although the question of the incarnation 
of the omnipresent, omnipotent and omnis- 
cient heavenly Father in human form was 
thus apparently solved by the church and 
theologians, still it has not ceased to rise 
again and again in the thoughtful minds of 
different people in different countries, dis- 
turbing their peace and frequently driving 
them into agnostic and atheistic beliefs. 
Many a soul has often cried aloud in despair: 
"What a revolting absurdity it is to think 
that the infinite and almighty Creator and 

Ruler of the infinite universe should be born 
151 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

in a manger, should suffer from hunger and 
thirst, should be tempted by the devil, chas- 
tised and scourged by ordinary mortals and 
forced to ignominious death upon the cross!" 
Devout Christians do not dare to see this 
absurdity or to express their opinion for fear 
of blasphemy and punishment; but truth- 
seeking, rational minds cannot rest content 
with mere doctrines and dogmas based upon 
the quicksand of the authority of some book 
or person. 

The question presents itself: "Is there 
any other way of understanding what is 
meant by an incarnation of God?" Outside 
of the Christian religion, there is one other 
religion or religious philosophy — that of Ve- 
danta — which explains through reason and 
logic the problem of divine incarnation in 
human form upon this earth. India is the 
only country where the origin of this idea can 
be traced back and where the belief has pre- 
vailed from prehistoric times. Long before 

Jesus of Nazareth was recognized as the incar- 
152 



What is an Incarnation of God ? 

nation of divinity, the Hindus had a clear 
conception of this idea. Volumes upon vol- 
umes have been written in Sanskrit describing 
why and how the Supreme Being manifests 
Itself in human form at different times among 
different nations. 

One of the principal points in which the 
Hindus differ from the Christians is in main- 
taining that, if God incarnates or expresses 
His divinity in human form, His incarnation 
cannot be limited by time, place or nationality. 
The Hindus believe that there were many incar- 
nations before and have been many since the 
advent of Christ, and that all these incarna- 
tions of God are equal in greatness, majesty, 
wisdom and divine powers, especially in the 
power of saving mankind by setting forth the 
highest ideal of life and by leading men from 
the path of unrighteousness to the ultimate 
goal of all religions. Who could have under- 
stood and realized the highest aim and pur- 
pose of human existence, who could have 

solved the most bewildering questions and 
153 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

problems concerning the true nature and des- 
tiny of human souls, if God himself had not 
revealed these things to mankind from time 
immemorial? Could ordinary human beings 
with their short-sighted intellect and imper- 
fect understanding, living constantly on the 
animal plane of the senses, deluded by the 
phantoms of phenomenal appearances and 
always mistaking the unreal for the real, have 
ever discovered the ultimate purpose of life 
and the true nature and destiny of human 
souls? Think of the innumerable opinions 
of atheists and agnostics, materialists and 
thinkers of different capacities which have 
bewildered the intellect and understanding 
of the vast majority of people! 

All true knowledge is but the expression 
of divine wisdom. All the powers that make 
one great, spiritual, righteous and wise, are 
only the divine powers manifesting through 
human forms. Therefore it is said in Ve- 
danta: "All that is glorious, grand, extremely 

righteous or spiritual, is the outcome of the 
154 



What is an Incarnation of God ? 

powers which proceed from the infinite source 
of all forces and of all energy in nature. Wher- 
ever there is anything that is extraordinary or 
unusually uplifting to the soul, there is a 
special expression of the divine power." 

According to the religion of Vedanta, the 
incarnation of God means the embodiment 
of divine qualities and divine powers. It takes 
place whenever and wherever such a mani- 
festation is necessary. The blessed Lord 
Krishna, one of the great incarnations of di- 
vinity, who appeared about fourteen hundred 
years before the birth of Christ, in speaking 
of divine incarnations, said : 

"Wherever true religion declines and irre- 
ligion prevails and whenever the vast majority 
of mankind, forgetting the highest ideal of 
life, travel on the path of unrighteousness 
which leads to the bottomless abyss of igno- 
rance, misery and sorrow, the Supreme Being 
manifests His divine powers to establish 
righteousness and true spirituality by assum- 
ing a human form and living in our midst, but 
155 



m 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

at the same time showing to all that He is 
the real master of nature and absolutely free 
from all the bondages of the world and its 
laws." 

Such embodiments may take place at any 
time in any country. The Hindus believe 
that there have been many such incarnations 
of divinity in the past and that there will be 
many in the future. Krishna, Buddha, Jesus 
the Christ, Chaitanya, Ramakrishna, each 
one of these has been considered to be the 
embodiment of di\dne qualities and divine 
powers. The lives and deeds of all of them 
were superhuman, consequently divine. They 
were full of the manifestations of such powers 
as ordinary mortals do not possess. 

A divine incarnation is one who shows 

from childhood that he is a born master of 

mind, body and senses, and the real Lord 

of nature, yet who never forgets even for a 

moment that he has come to the world to help 

mankind. He is always conscious of his 

divine power and he manifests divine glory 
156 



What is an Incarnation of God ? 

through every action of his daily life. He 
never loses consciousness of his oneness with 
the eternal Truth, or the Father of the uni- 
verse, the infinite source of wisdom and intelli- 
gence. He lives in the world like an embodied 
soul, possessing perfect peace, tranquillity, 
happiness and blissfulness, without depend- 
ing upon the conditions and environments 
which apparently bind the souls of ordinary 
mortals. 

The difference between an ordinary human 
being and an incarnation .of God lies in the 
fact that the individual soul of a common 
man takes birth subject to the laws of Karma, 
or the laws of causation and of action and 
reaction, in order to reap the results of the 
works of his previous births and to fulfil the 
desires that are latent in him; while a divine 
incarnation is the embodiment of his own 
free will, which alone governs him. Being 
absolutely free he is not forced by the law of 
Karma or any other law to take a human 

body, nor does he wish to fulfil any of those 
157 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

desires that proceed from the selfish nature 
of ordinary mortals. His soul is not subject 
to the law of evolution like that of any other 
being. He is absolutely perfect from the very- 
moment that he assumes human form through 
the inscrutable power of his own omnipotent, 
supreme will or Maya. Although such an 
incarnation of God is beyond birth and 
death, he still apparently submits, for the time 
being, to the conditions of the human plane, 
and obeys the laws that govern that plane; 
yet at the same time he makes people realize 
that he is the master of nature, not its slave, 
and that in reality he does not obey its laws 
but that the laws of nature obey his om- 
nipotent will. Ordinary people, whose spir- 
itual eyes are not open, may not see the differ- 
ence that exists between his actions and those 
of a common mortal and may treat him like 
an ordinary man; but those who are highly 
advanced in spirituality, who understand 
the true nature of the individual soul and of 

God and of their mutual relation, see the 
158 



What is an Incarnation of God? 

difference at once, recognize his divinity 
and worship him as the ideal embodiment 
of divine powers and divine qualities. 

It is for this reason that the blessed Lord 
Krishna, the Hindu Christ, says in the Bha- 
gavad Gita: " People who are deluded by my 
mysterious power of Maya, do not know Me 
as unborn and unchanging; I am not manifest 
to them. The unintelligent regard Me in 
the light of an ordinary being with a material 
form which is the result of past actions, and 
know not that I assume at will glorious and 
holy forms for the protection of the world." 

The religion of Vedanta teaches that such 
incarnations of Divinity are not limited by 
distinctions of sex; they may appear in mas- 
culine or in feminine form according to the 
needs of the time and place. To the sexless 
Supreme Being who is both the Father and 
Mother of the Universe, the masculine and 
the feminine form are of equal value and 
importance. It is for this reason that amongst 

the Hindus in India are to be found many 
159 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

incarnations of Divinity in the form of 
woman. 

The latest divine incarnation was one who 
appeared in the middle of the nineteenth 
century. He lived near Calcutta and his 
name was Ramakrishna. He is to-day wor- 
shipped by thousands of educated Hindus 
just in the same way as Jesus the Christ 
is adored and worshipped in Christendom. 
From his childhood he showed his divine 
power and set an example of absolute purity 
and divine spirituality, like an embodiment 
of those blessed qualities which adorned the 
characters of previous incarnations, such as 
Krishna, Buddha, or Jesus the Christ. Those 
who had the good fortune to see and be with 
him even for a short time, had their eyes 
opened to the truth that he was absolutely 
superhuman. Although he had received no 
school education, his wisdom was vast. He 
was the storehouse, as it were, of unlimited 
knowledge, and he showed at every moment 

of his life that he was the absolute master of 
160 



What is an Incarnation of God ? 

his mind, body and senses, that he was entirely- 
free from all the conditions that make an 
ordinary mortal a slave to passions and desires. 
He was like the personification of the Sermon 
on the Mount. No one could ever find the 
slightest flaw in his noble and divine char- 
acter.* 

At one time he was asked: "What is the 
difference between a holy sage and an incarna- 
tion of God who is called the Saviour of man- 
kind?" He answered: "A holy sage is one 
who has realized God through great pain, 
long prayers and severe penances and after 
much trouble has saved himself from the 
attractions of the world, but he has not the 
power to save others; while a Saviour is one 
who can easily save hundreds without losing 
his own spirituality. A holy sage may be 
compared to a reed floating in the ocean of 

* Those who wish to know more about the life of 
this divine man and why he is worshipped as a 
Saviour of mankind, may read Swami Viveka- 
nanda's lecture on " My Master," or " Life and 
Sayings of Ramakrishna," by Prof. Max Muller. 
161 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

life, which cannot bear the weight of even a 
crow, but when a Saviour descends He 
easily carries thousands across the ocean 
like a large, powerful steamer which moves 
swiftly over the waters towing rafts and 
barges in its wake. The Saviour, like the 
most powerful locomotive, not only reaches 
the destination himself, but at the same time 
draws with him loads of passengers eager 
to go to the abode eternal of Truth." 

Such is the power and strength of an in- 
carnation of God. An ordinary person may 
strive and after & long struggle may attain to 
the realization of truth which is salvation, 
but with a Saviour, this is not the way; he 
comes to help and save others. Whosoever 
worships and is devoted to any of these Sa- 
viours will, through that power of devotion 
alone, reach the ultimate goal of all religions. 
As Jesus the Christ said: "Come unto me 
all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I 
will give you rest," so the other incarnations 

of Divinity like Ramakrishna, Buddha and 
162 



What is an Incarnation of God? 

Krishna spoke to their followers, saying in 

the words of Krishna: 

" Giving up all the formalities of religion, 

come unto me, take refuge in me and I will * 

give thee rest and make thee free from sins; 

grieve not, I will also give thee eternal peace 

and everlasting happiness." 
163 



Son of God. 



"The Divine Lord says: 'A portion of Myself hath 
become the living Soul in the world of life from time with' 
out beginning' " — Bhagavad Gita, *;v, 7. 



Son of God. 

It is a general belief among Christians 

that nearly two thousand years ago the only 

begotten Son of God descended upon this 

earth to save the souls of sinners from eternal 

perdition. Thoughtful people, however, may 

wish to enquire into the true significance of 

this expression "Son of God." Again and 

again are asked the questions: "Why should 

Jesus the Christ alone be called the only 

begotten son of God?" "In what sense was 

he the son of the heavenly Father?" "Is 

not every individual a child of the heavenly 

Father when it is said in the 14th chapter 

of Deuteronomy, 'Ye are the children of the 

Lord your God;' or when Moses said, 'Is 

not he thy father that hath bought thee, hath 

he not made thee and established thee?'" 
167 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

(Deut. xxxii, 6.) And the Hindu asks: 
"Why should we not recognize the divine 
sonship in Krishna, Buddha, Ramakrishna 
and in other Saviours of the world?" 

All these and similar questions disturb 
the minds of those who are not satisfied with 
the sectarian explanations regarding the son- 
ship of Jesus the Christ which they have been 
hearing over and over again from their child- 
hood. Of course we have nothing to say 
to those whose minds are contented with such 
explanations, or who believe in the literal 
meaning of the passages descriptive of the 
supernatural birth and miraculous deeds of 
the only begotten son of God. But there 
are many who do not believe in miracles, 
who do not accept anything upon hearsay 
or because it has been written in a certain 
book or been declared by a certain great 
personage. They wish to go to the very 
bottom of things before they accept them 
as true; they want to know in what sense the 

divine sonship of the heavenly Father was 
168 



Son of God. 

understood by Jesus of Nazareth and his 
direct disciples. 

It is extremely difficult for any one to know 
exactly what Jesus meant by his sonship since 
he has left no writings of his own. We can only 
gather some idea from the interpretations of 
his followers and from the writers of the four 
authentic gospels. After studying carefully 
the synoptic gospels we learn that there were 
among the authors of these books two concep- 
tions of the son of God. Matthew and Luke 
accepted Jesus the Christ as the only begotten 
son of God because of his supernatural birth, 
which was caused by the inscrutable power 
of the heavenly Father. According to these 
two Gospels it was a miracle; and upon 
this miraculous conception of Mary and the 
supernatural birth of Jesus depends the 
popular meaning of the divine sonship of Jesus 
the Christ. All the orthodox sects and denom- 
inations of Christianity, accepting the mira- 
cles described in Matthew and Luke as lit- 
erally true, give this miraculous birth as the 
169 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

reason why Jesus alone should be called the 

only begotten son of God. They do not 

recognize that other Saviours of the world, 

like Buddha and Krishna, had a similar 

supernatural birth and that their deeds were 

as miraculous as those of Jesus the Christ. 

If we ignore them, it will be quite easy for 

us to accept Jesus the Christ as the only 

begotten son of God. 

The other conception of the son of God 

which we find in the fourth gospel, has a 

very deep philosophical significance. Before 

we discuss this point, let us understand clearly 

what conception of God the Jews had both 

before and after the time of Jesus the Christ. 

We know that the Jewish idea of God was 

at that time purely monotheistic. The God 

of Judaism was the creator and governor of 

the universe; He dwelt in a heaven far above 

mundane existence; He was so high and 

separate from the world, so extra-cosmic, so 

great, so majestic and so transcendent, that 

no one could approach Him, no one could 
170 



Son of God. 

live after seeing Him face to face. Conse- 
quently there was a wide gulf of separation 
between God and man, between the creator 
in heaven and the creature on earth. The 
idea of divinity in man was unknown to the 
Jews; such an idea would have been consid- 
ered blasphemous by them. The Jews could 
never believe that Yahveh would stoop so 
low as to come down on the human plane 
or to live in a human form. The same spirit 
prevails among the Jews of to-day, and it 
has also been inherited by the Mahometans* 
According to them God is far above man, 
no human being can ever represent His divin- 
ity, and there can be no other relation be- 
tween man and God, between the creature 
and his creator, than that of a servant to the 
all-powerful master, or that of a subject to 
the most tyrannical monarch. The passages 
that have been quoted from the Old Testa- 
ment like, "Ye are the children of God," 
meant nothing more than the fatherly good- 
ness of the Creator and the implicit obedience 
171 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

of the creature, as that of a dutiful son to his 
father. They were never meant in the sense 
in which the Christians understand the divine 
sonship of Jesus the Christ. Through the 
paternal goodness of Yahveh, Abraham be- 
came the friend of God and Adam became 
the son of God, as described in the thirty- 
eighth verse of the third chapter of Luke. 

Nearly two centuries before the advent of 
Jesus the Christ, when the Jews came in con- 
tact with the Greeks, they found in Greek 
mythology a belief in Zeus-pitar or Jupiter, 
who was conceived as the Supreme Deity 
and the creator of the universe. He was not 
only the father of the gods and of the whole 
world, but also the father of the most power- 
ful kings and heroes, who were called the 
children or the "offspring of Zeus" in the 
literal sense of these terms. We all know 
that the gods of Greek mythology could 
marry mortal women of virtuous character 
and could beget children, while mortal men 

were allowed to marry goddesses. iEacus, 
172 



Son of God. 

for instance, was born of ^Egina but his 
father was Zeus the Supreme Deity; while 
Achilles was the son of the goddess Thetis 
by a mortal father named Peleus. 

These ideas, however, were not acceptable 
to the Jews; on the contrary, they were con- 
sidered as blasphemous and were rejected 
by the orthodox Hebrews. History never- 
theless tells us that the worship of Zeus-pitar 
or Jupiter was introduced into Babylon and 
Northern Palestine by Antiochus Epiphanes 
between 175 and 163 B.C. The orthodox 
Jews revolted against this innovation; still 
there were many liberal-minded Jews among 
the Pharisees who liked the idea, accepted it 
and preached it. Among these was Rabbi 
Hillel, one of the most prominent of Jewish 
priests of that epoch, who lived a few years 
before Christ and died when Jesus was ten 
years of age. He was considered by many 
scholars as the true master and predecessor 
of Jesus and was held in great esteem by the 

Pharisaic sect of the Jews. He inculcated 
173 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

the belief in the merciful and fatherly char- 
acter of Yahveh like that of Zeus-pitar, and 
it was he also who introduced the golden rule 
for the first time. At the same moment Philo 
and the Neo-Platonist Jews in Alexandria 
were teaching the fatherly character of Yahveh 
and the only begotten sonship of the Greek 
Logos or the Word. Philo was a contem- 
porary of Jesus, but he never even mentioned 
his name. Many of the Oriental scholars 
and higher critics of the New Testament say 
that the writer of the Fourth Gospel must 
have been a follower of Philo, because in this 
gospel alone Jesus the Christ is identified with 
the Greek Logos, which was explained by 
Philo as the only begotten Son of the Almighty 
Heavenly Father. 

Some people claim that the Messianic hope 
of the Jewish prophets was fulfilled in the 
personality and character of Jesus and that 
for this reason he was called the Son of God; 
but critical readers of Jewish history know 

perfectly well that the Jewish conception of a 
174 



Son of God. 

Messiah had nothing to do with the Christian 
idea of the divine sonship of Jesus the Christ. 
History explains to us the social and political 
conditions of those days which gave rise to the 
Messianic conception of a deliverer from the sea 
of misfortune in which the Jewish nation was 
well-nigh drowned. For centuries the Jews had 
been conquered and subdued by the Persians, 
Greeks and other stronger powers around them. 
Social intrigues, political insurrections, rebel- 
lions, and constant wars raged in almost every 
community and kept the people busy for many 
years before, during, and after the time of the 
Babylonian captivity. Such a period naturally 
kindles the fire of patriotism in the hearts of a 
nation and forces its members to be active in 
every possible way. The misfortunes and ca- 
lamities which befell the descendants of Israel 
made them remember the promises of Yahveh, 
which had been handed down to them through 
the writings of the prophets, and compelled 
them to seek supernatural aid for the fulfill- 
ment of those promises. 
175 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

The unconquerable pride of the sons of 
Israel which made them feel that they were 
the chosen people of Yahveh, the only true 
God, who was their director and governor, 
stimulated their minds with the hope that 
through the supernatural power of Yahveh 
the kingdom of their ancestors would be re- 
stored, that a member of David's house would 
appear as the Messiah (the Anointed), and 
sit on their throne, unite the twelve tribes of 
Israel under his sceptre and govern them in 
peace and prosperity. This was the first 
conception of a Messiah that ever arose in 
the minds of the Jews- It was the principal 
theme of the Jewish poets and prophets who 
lived during the Babylonian exile. The glory 
of the house of Israel and the earthly prosperity 
of the worshippers of Yahveh were the highest 
ideals of the Jews. They did not mean by 
Messiah a spiritual saviour of sinners from 
eternal perdition, for they did not believe in 
eternal life of any kind. 

The Christian idea of a Messiah as the Sa- 
176 



Son of God. 

viour of the world and a deliverer from sin 
and evil does not owe its origin to the Messianic 
hope of the Jews but to the Persian conception 
of the coming of Sosiosh, who, according to 
the promise of Ahura Mazda, would appear 
in the heavens on the Day of Judgment, 
destroy the evil influence of Ahriman and 
renovate the world. Some of the Pharisees 
accepted this idea. Most probably Jesus of 
Nazareth was familiar with this Persian con- 
ception of the Messiah, but at the same time 
he tried to spiritualize the Jewish ideal by 
preaching a reign of righteousness and justice, 
instead of a reign of war and strife between 
nations, a kingdom of peace and love instead 
of a dominion of earthly power and prosperity. 
Thus we see why the Messianic hope of 
the Jewish prophets was not literally fulfilled 
in Jesus th|* Christ, and why the conception 
of a Messiah does not explain the true mean- 
ing of the Christian idea of the divine son- 
ship of Christ. We have already seen how 

the Judaic conception of God made Yahveh 

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Vedanta Philosophy. 

extra-cosmic and unapproachable by human 
beings, and how a vast gulf of separation was 
thus created between God and man, between 
the Creator and his creatures. Many of the 
prophets felt it strongly, especially when 
Judaism came in touch with the Hellenic 
religion which made God so near and approach- 
able to mortals. Various attempts were made 
to bridge over this gulf of separation between 
man and God, between the visible and the 
invisible; and these attempts eventually re- 
sulted in the acceptance of the Logos theory 
of the Greek philosophers by the Alexandrian 
Jews, who, as I have already said, lived about 
the time of Jesus the Christ. The foremost 
of them was Philo. It was he who first suc- 
ceeded in showing the connection between 
the visible world and the invisible creator 
through the Logos of the Stoics and Neo- 
Platonists; but at the same time he gave a 
new interpretation to this word. 

"Logos" is a Greek term meaning orig- 
inally "word," not in the sense of mere sound, 
178 



Son of God. 

but also of thought embodied in sound — as 
when we utter a word, the meaning is in- 
cluded in the sound, since words are nothing 
but the outward expressions of thoughts which 
are imperceptible. From the time of Heracli- 
tus, the most ancient Greek philosopher, down 
to the time of the Neo-Platonists this term 
was used by different thinkers in various senses. 
According to Heraclitus, Logos meant fire, 
which was conceived as the all-pervading 
essence of the universe out of which emanated 
the individual soul of man. Anaxagoras 
understood by Logos the cosmic mind, a 
portion of which was manifested in the human 
soul; but the Stoic philosophers who came 
later, meant by it reason or supreme intelli- 
gence. Logos pervaded all matter, and reason 
or intelligence in man was considered to be a 
part of the universal reason or intelligence 
or Logos, through which was established 
the connection between man and the Divine 
Mind. In fact Logos always signified the nexus 

between the manifested world and its Cause. 
179 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

As has already been said, Philo, being 
brought up in the Neo-Platonic school, 
adopted this Stoic theory of Logos to explain 
the relation between Yahveh, the Supreme 
Creator of the Semitic religion, and the visible 
mortal man of this world. But he meant by 
Logos the ideal creation which existed in the 
Divine Mind before the actual creation. For 
instance, before the creation of light God 
said, "Let there be light." These words, 
however, were merely an audible expression 
of the thought or idea of light that existed 
in the Divine Mind: the creation of the 
external light was therefore nothing but the 
projection or expression of the idea or thought 
of light in the Divine Mind. As this ideal 
light may be called the connecting link between 
the gross visible light and the invisible Divine 
Mind, so the ideal creation becomes the 
bridge that spans the gulf of separation be- 
tween the invisible creator and the gross 
phenomenal creation, and this idea or thought 

of the Divine Mind was the Logos of Philo; 
180 



Son of God. 

it signified the universal thought of the world 
or the ideal world in the mind of the Divine 
Being before anything came into existence. 
Like a dream, the world of ideas appeared 
in the Divine Mind and was afterwards pro- 
jected in physical space, just as a carpenter, 
before he makes a chair, forms a mental image 
of it and then projects it outside. Since this 
Logos or the ideal world was the first emana- 
tion or expression of the cosmic mind, it was 
called the "first born," "the only begotten 
son," "the unique son;" all these terms, 
however, were used by Philo and his followers 
in their poetical or metaphorical sense. Ac- 
cording to this theory, the universal Logos 
included all the ideas and thoughts, or rather 
the perfect types of all created things that 
exist in the universe. Before a horse was 
created, there was a perfect idea or type of 
horse in the Divine Mind. We do not see 
this perfect type in the world; we may see a 
red or a black horse, a large or a small horse, 

but we cannot see the ideal horse. What 
181 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

we call a perfect horse is nothing but the 

nearest approach to the perfect ideal horse 

that exists eternally in the Divine Mind. So 

it is with every created species, thing or being. 

Before man came into existence there was an 

ideal man or a perfect type of man in the 

thought of God, and its projection or physical 

manifestation became something like that 

ideal type, because the gross manifestation, 

being limited by time, space, and causation, 

cannot be exactly the same as the ideal type 

which is perfect. 

This ideal, or the perfect type of man, 

which existed in the Divine Mind, is eternal 

and a part of the universal Logos. All 

human beings, therefore, are more or less 

imperfect expressions of that ideal man or 

Logos or the first begotten son of the Divine 

Mind. It does not refer to the human form 

alone, but also to the perfect character or the 

soul. The individual souls, however perfect 

or imperfect they may be in the actions of 

their daily life, are potentially the same as 
182 



Son of God. 

the Logos, or the universal ideal man that 
existed in God's mind before creation. Every 
one of us is trying to express as perfectly as 
possible that ideal type of man in whose cast 
we have been moulded by the divine hand. 
Each one of us, therefore, is one with that 
first begotten son of God — such was the orig- 
inal meaning of the "Son of God" according 
to Philo and his disciples. We must not 
forget, however, that Philo did not know 
Jesus the Christ, although he lived at the 
same time. The writer of the Fourth Gospel, 
whoever he may have been, was an advocate 
of the Logos theory of Philo as well as a be- 
liever in Christ as the perfect type of man or 
the incarnate word of God on earth in the 
truest sense of the term. It was for this 
reason that he began the gospel with that 
famous verse, which has created so much 
confusion in the minds of Christian theolo- 
gians: "In the beginning was the Word 
and the Word was with God, and the Word 

was God." The meaning of this passage 
183 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

will be clear if we remember that the author 

of the fourth gospel identified the Word or 

Logos of Philo with Christ — but not with 

Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary — and 

that since then this Christ has become the 

only begotten Son of God. 

Furthermore, it should be understood that 

the word "Christ," like the word "Logos" 

of Philo, did not at first mean any particular 

individual or personality, but it referred to the 

universal ideal type of man, or the perfect man 

who dwells in the Divine Mind from eternity 

to eternity. In this sense the word Christ is 

as universal as the Logos. It is not confined 

to any particular person or nationality. We 

must not confound this ideal impersonal 

Christ or the only begotten Son of God with 

the historical personality of Jesus of Nazareth, 

the son of Mary; but we must take it in 

its true spiritual sense, we must understand 

that each individual soul, being the expression 

of the first born Son of God, is potentially 

the same as the only begotten Son of God, 
184 



Son of God. 

or the child of Immortal Bliss as it is said in 
Vedanta. When we have realized this imper- 
sonal ideal Christ in our souls, from that very 
moment we have become Christ-like; and 
it is then that the impersonal Christ, the 
only begotten son, will be born within us. 

Very few of the true Christians can fully 
understand this most sublime universal mean- 
ing of the divine sonship of Christ and conse- 
quently of every living soul. It is extremely 
difficult for them to extricate their minds 
from the maze of the traditional personality 
of Jesus of Nazareth. Students of Vedanta, 
on the contrary, can comprehend this universal 
meaning very easily, because in Vedanta the 
question of the historical personality of an 
individual, however great and spiritual he 
may be, is not the principal point to be dis- 
cussed; its sole aim is to lift us above all 
limitations of personality and to lead us to 
the realization of the universal Truth or the 
Divine sonship of each individual soul. We 

are all children of Immortal Bliss, of the 
185 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

omnipotent and omniscient Divine Being. 
We are not children of some other being, 
nor are we children of earthly fathers. Par- 
ents have not created our souls, but on the con- 
trary our souls existed even before the creation 
of the world. By our birthright, as it were, 
we possess the claim of divine sonship. No 
one can deprive us of this right. We may 
think of ourselves at present as mortals sub- 
ject to birth and death, to grief, sorrow, and 
misery; we may call ourselves sons and daugh- 
ters of men, but the time is sure to come 
when our spiritual eyes will be opened to 
the truth of our being as sons of the Heavenly 
Father. 

The expression " Son of God " shows in a 
metaphorical way the extrinsic variety and 
the intrinsic unity that exist between the 
soul of man and the Supreme Spirit. Out- 
wardly the child is different from the father, 
but his whole soul is one with the father. 
If we can leave out the external and go to 

the innermost depth of our souls, there we 
186 



Son of God. 

shall see and realize our divine relation, and 
eventually we shall become one with the 
Supreme Spirit and say, as did Jesus of Naza- 
reth, "I and my Father are one." We must 
learn that becoming means knowing and 
knowing is becoming. When we know our- 
selves as children of earthly fathers, we have 
become so; and when we know that we are 
children of God, we become such. This we 
shall be able to understand better from the 
parable of the King's son and the shepherd. 

There was a very powerful king in ancient 
India. By his conquests he became emperor, 
but unfortunately in the prime of life he sud- 
denly died and within a few months his queen 
passed away giving birth to his only child, 
the heir to the throne. The other members 
of the royal family, in order to usurp the throne, 
took the babe away, left him in a distant for- 
est, and spread the news that the child was 
dead. Fortunately he was discovered by a 
shepherd who went into the forest for hunting. 

This man had no children of his own and out 
187 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

of compassion he took the child, brought it 
home, and gave it to his wife, asking her to 
take care of it as her own babe. The child 
was brought up as a shepherd boy; he did 
not know anything of the secret, he called the 
shepherd his father, played with other shep- 
herd boys and tried his best to help his father 
in his work and to earn a share of his living. 
He felt sometimes very miserable and unhappy, 
but he did not know anything better. 

After a few years, when he grew older, he 
happened to meet the old prime minister of 
the deceased emperor. The minister, who 
knew the whole secret, at once saw in the 
face of that young shepherd a resemblance 
to the emperor and, instantly recognizing 
him, addressed and honored him as the 
prince and heir to the throne. The shep- 
herd youth looked at the minister in great 
amazement and could not believe his state- 
ments; but the minister persuaded him to come 
to the palace, made him sit on his father's 

throne and asked him to take care of the 
188 



Son of God. 

property and govern the empire. Gradually 
the mind of the young shepherd woke up, 
as it were, from a dream and he realized 
that he was the only son of the emperor, 
governed his empire, and became the emperor. 

Even so it is with us, being children of the 
Emperor of the universe; we have forgotten 
our birthright and are acting like the shepherd 
boy. The moment that we know who we 
are and what we are, that very moment we 
shall become conscious of our divine heritage 
and shall understand that in reality we are 
not children of earthly parents but of the 
Father of the universe. No one can deprive 
us of this divine birthright. 

All the great Saviours of the world, like 

Krishna, Buddha, Christ, were conscious 

of their divine sonship from their childhood 

and never forgot it. They were like the 

prime minister; they came to the shepherd 

boy of the human soul to give the message 

of truth, that it is not the son of the earthly 

shepherd father but of the Emperor of the 
189 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

universe. Let us enter into our divine heritage 
and rule our heavenly empire. Let us become 
like the emperor of the universe. Let us fol- 
low the paths of the great Saviours of the 
world, each one of whom manifested in his life 
the perfect type of man, the ideal man, the 
Word or Logos. Let us obey their instructions 
and, by manifesting divinity through humanity, 
let us become perfect even as the Father in 
heaven is perfect; then we shall be happy 
both here and hereafter and shall attain to 
that everlasting bliss, which is the goal of all 

religions, 

190 



Divine Principle in Man, 



"There is in this body a higher Soul, the Looker-on 
and the Sanctioner, the Sustainer and the Experiencer, 
the Mighty Lord, who is also designated the Supreme 
Spirit." — Bhagavad Gita xiii, 22. 

" He who is the Omniscient Knower of all, whose glory is 
manifested in the universe, dwells in the heart and assum- 
ing the nature of the mind, becomes the guide of the body 
and of the senses. The wise who understand this, realize 
the Self -effulgent, Immortal, and Blissful One" — Mun- 
daka Upanishad ii, 2 Kh. 7. 



Divine Principle in Man. 

The study of human nature is the most 
interesting and the most beneficial of all 
studies. The more we study ourselves, the 
better we can understand the universe, its 
laws, and the Truth that underlies its phe- 
nomena. It is said, " man is the epitome of 
the universe; whatever exists in the world is 
to be found in the body of man." As, on 
the one hand, we find in man all those tend- 
encies and propensities which characterize 
the lower animals, so on the other, we see him 
manifesting through the actions of his life all 
those noble qualities that adorn the character 
of one whom we honor, respect and worship 
as the Divine Being. Human nature seems 

to be a most wonderful blending of that which 
193 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

is animal with that which is called divine. 
It is like the twilight before daybreak, through 
which the darkness of the night of the animal 
nature passes into the glorious sunshine of 
the supreme wisdom. Human nature may 
be called the state of transition from the ani- 
mal into the divine. The animal nature 
includes the love of self or the attachment of 
one's self to one's body and to everything 
related to the body and the senses, desire for 
sense pleasures and sense enjoyments, the 
clinging to earthly life, fear of death and the 
struggle for existence. Each of these quali- 
ties or tendencies is to be found in the lower 
animals as well as in human beings, the dif- 
ference being only in degree and not in 
kind. 

The savage man who lives like a wild beast 
in a cave or under trees and does not know 
how to build a house or cultivate the ground, 
but who sustains life by depending entirely 
upon fruits, roots, wild berries, or upon the 

birds and beasts that he can trap, expresses 
194 



Divine Principle in Man. 

in all the actions of his life nothing more than 
what we have described as animal tendencies 
and animal propensities. If the Darwinian 
theory be true, then we can easily explain why 
there should be so little difference between 
primitive man and his distant ancestor, the 
chimpanzee, or some other member of the 
anthropoid species. When, however, the same 
wild man becomes partially civilized by learn- 
ing to cultivate the land, to raise food and 
cook it, to build houses and live in communi- 
ties, he no longer manifests these animal tend- 
encies in their simpler and more savage 
forms. He gradually adopts more artful 
methods to accomplish his purposes. For 
instance, the struggle for existence depends 
chiefly upon physical force among savage 
tribes as well as among animals, while among 
civilized people in civilized countries a similar 
result in the form of the survival of the fittest is 
obtained, not by the display of brute force, 
but by art, skill, diplomacy, policy, lying, 

strategy, and hypocrisy. These are the offen- 
195 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

sive and defensive weapons of the so-called 
"civilized man." 

All the vicious qualities and wicked deeds, 
such as murder, theft, robbery and other crimes 
which are to be found in civilized communities, 
are nothing but the expressions of the animal 
tendencies of man working under the heavy 
pressure of the rigid laws of society, state and 
government. They proceed from love of self 
or extreme attachment to the animal nature. 
Being guided by these lower tendencies, man 
becomes extremely selfish, and does not recog- 
nize the rights or comforts of his fellow-beings. 
On the contrary, he does everything to satisfy 
the cravings of his body and senses at the ex- 
pense of his neighbors. But the moment 
that this savage man, or the man who lives 
like a lower animal, begins to see the rights 
of others, learns to love and care for his fellow- 
beings in the same way that he loves his own 
dear self and cares for his own belongings, 
from that time he rises a step higher than the 

absolutely animal plane; he becomes truly 
196 



Divine Principle in Man. 

human and gradually manifests the other 
qualities and tendencies that accompany this 
fundamental moral principle — to love one's 
neighbor as one's self. 

Upon this foundation has been built the 
whole structure of ethics among all nations. 
The virtuous qualities such as disinterested 
love for humanity, mercy, justice, kindness 
towards others, forgiveness, self-sacrifice, all 
these help the animal man to expand the 
range of his love of self and to subdue all 
that proceeds from purely selfish attachment 
to his own body and senses. The higher we 
rise above the animal plane, the wider becomes 
the circle of self-love, and instead of being 
confined to the body and senses of the indi- 
vidual, it becomes general, covering the selves 
not merely of dearest relatives and nearest 
friends, but of neighbors, countrymen, and 
at last, of all humanity. Thus, the more 
universal our love of self becomes, the nearer 
we approach the Divinity, because the Divine 

Principle is the universal Being whose love 
197 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

flows equally towards all living creatures, as 
the sun shines equally upon the heads of the 
virtuous and the wicked. 

Anything that is done, not with a motive 
confined to some particular person, community 
or nation, but through love for all humanity, 
nay with a feeling that seeks the benefit of 
all living creatures, is unselfish; consequently 
it is guided by the universal or Divine Prin- 
ciple. The tendency of the individual self 
of each man is not to remain confined within 
one narrow circle, but to go beyond the bound- 
ary of the circle of the animal nature, beyond 
human nature, and ultimately to become 
universal. All charitable acts and philan- 
thropic deeds are but steps toward that one 
goal. Well has it been said by Ralph Waldo 
Emerson that "the life of man is a self-evolv- 
ing circle, which from a ring imperceptibly 
small rushes on all sides outwards to new 
and larger circles, and that without end." 

Indeed the self of man has the constant 

tendency to break down all limitations, to 
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Divine Principle in Man. 

transcend all boundaries, and to become one 
with the Self of the universe. A human 
being cannot rest contented, cannot remain 
perfectly satisfied while living within the 
limitations of his animal nature. He may 
appear to be contented for a time, or he may 
delude himself by thinking that he is perfectly 
happy and satisfied under these conditions, 
but the moment is sure to come when, being 
forced from within, he will give vent to the 
natural tendency to expand by struggling 
hard to reach out from the animal self and be 
united with the universal Self. This tend- 
ency is inherent in the very nature of man 
and its expression will force him to control 
the lower animal desires and propensities, to 
become the absolute master of them, and 
will gradually lead him to live a moral and 
spiritual life. 

The awakening may come at any time and 
under any circumstances. One may be sud- 
denly awakened in the midst of all the com- 
forts, luxuries and pleasures of the earthly 
199 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

life. No one can tell when or how such an 
awakening will come to the individual soul. 
There have been many instances in India 
and in other countries of this sudden awakening 
of the higher tendency of the soul. Buddha 
was suddenly awakened when he was enjoy- 
ing all the pleasures and luxuries of a princely 
life, when his mind was deeply absorbed in 
every enjoyment that a human being can pos- 
sibly have. This awakening, which made 
Buddha one of the Saviours of the world and 
which has made others live on this earth like 
embodiments of Divinity, is not the result of 
some animal force or some lower tendency to 
be found in lower animals or in those who 
live like slaves of passion and desire, but it is 
the expression of a higher power. It is not 
love of the body or desire of the senses, not 
attachment to the pleasures and comforts of 
the animal self; it is just the opposite. It is 
love for humanity which makes one forget 
one's self. It is not a desire to gain some- 
thing for one's own comfort, but it is a desire 
200 



Divine Principle in Man. 

to help mankind, to remove their grievances, 
their sorrows and sufferings and to make 
them happy. It is not a clinging to earthly 
existence, but on the contrary, it is the expres- 
sion of the desire to sacrifice one's own life 
for the sake of others without having the 
slightest fear of death. It is not a struggle 
for existence or the survival of the fittest at 
the expense of others, but it is the cessation 
of all gladiatorial fights, struggles and com- 
petitions, and the attainment of peace, tran- 
quillity and happiness. It is making the 
weak to survive and the strong to be kind 
and merciful toward those who are about to 
be crushed by social competition. Are not 
these powers and tendencies diametrically 
opposed to those which characterize the 
animal man? 

These higher powers and tendencies have 
been manifested again and again by differ- 
ent individuals at different times in different 
countries. The religious history of the world 

stands as a living witness of this fact. But 
201 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

the question arises, how do we happen to 
possess these higher tendencies and higher 
powers? Did we inherit them from our 
anthropoid ancestors? No indeed, because 
animal nature cannot produce anything that 
is not entirely animal. The believers in the 
Darwinian theory cannot explain the origin 
of these super-animal or rather superhuman 
tendencies. Have they been super-added to 
our animal nature from outside by the grace 
of some extra-cosmic Being, as it is supposed 
by the dualistic and monotheistic believers 
of Christianity and other religions? No, 
such a statement cannot be supported either 
by reason or by scientific investigation. No 
one has ever succeeded in proving when and 
how these powers and higher tendencies 
were super-added to the human soul. The 
most rational explanation lies in the state- 
ment in the book of Genesis: "So God created 
man in his own image, in the image of God 
created He him." 

Let us understand clearly the meamng of 
202 



Divine Principle in Man. 

this passage. We are familiar with the popu- 
lar meaning which seems absurd when we 
examine it in the light of modern scientific 
knowledge. In the first place the creation 
of man out of nothing six thousand years ago 
does not bear the test of modern geological 
research and discoveries. On the contrary, 
we are aware of the fact that man existed in 
the Tertiary period, several thousand years 
before this Biblical creation of man was sup- 
posed to have taken place. Secondly, we 
know that this word " image" does not mean 
the physical form of man, nor does it refer 
to the first man Adam, who was supposed 
to have been the perfect image of God before 
the Satanic temptation, and who after the 
fall lost that image and became imperfect, 
because of which it is said that all human 
beings have since been born in sin. We can- 
not believe that all of us were born in sin and 
iniquity, and, having lost the Divine image 
within us, thus became the sons of Satan or 

the Devil. If man was created in the image 
203 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

of God, it could not possibly mean that one 
particular man of a particular nation at a 
special time possessed His image, but it was 
meant for all human beings, irrespective of 
their caste, creed or nationality. 

We must remember that there are no ex- 
ceptions in the laws of nature. That which 
we take for an exception refers to some hidden 
universal law or truth, whether we see or 
understand it or not; and that explanation 
is correct which harmonizes with universal 
law and points out universal truth. If we 
admit the existence of the Divine image in 
one man, we shall have to admit it in all human 
beings; otherwise it will be an exceptional 
case, which cannot be true. As by discover- 
ing the cause of the fall of one apple from one 
tree, we learn the universal law of gravitation, 
which explains that all apples under those 
circumstances will fall, so by knowing that 
one man was made in God's image, we under- 
stand the universal truth that all men, women 

and children of all countries and of all times 
204 



Divine Principle in Man. 

have been made in the Divine image, whether 
or not they have felt it, realized it, or mani- 
fested it in their actions. 

If, on the other hand, it were true that all 
of us were born in sin and iniquity or under 
Satanic influence, it would have been abso- 
lutely impossible for any man at any time to 
manifest any of those tendencies and powers 
which we call divine, and we should be unable 
to explain why the great sages and spiritual 
leaders of mankind, who flourished in India 
and in other countries both before and after 
the Christian era, could show all the Divine 
powers and qualities that characterized the 
only begotten Son of God. Their lives show 
that every one of them manifested divinity 
in the actions of their daily life. Therefore 
we must lay aside the mythical meaning of 
that scriptural passage and understand it in 
its universal sense. Furthermore, this uni- 
versal meaning of the Divine image in man 
was most strongly emphasized by the great 

seers of Truth in India from very ancient 
205 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

times and centuries before the book of Genesis 
was written or thought of. The same uni- 
versal idea is the foundation of the philosophy 
and religion of Vedanta. 

Vedanta teaches that when we speak of a 
man or woman as the image of God, we do 
not mean his or her physical form, but we 
mean the individual ego or the soul. If the 
Divine Being or God be this universal spirit 
then His image cannot be the physical form 
of man; this does not convey any idea or 
meaning at all. The ego or the soul of each 
individual man or woman is the image of 
Divinity. This idea has been beautifully 
expressed in Vedanta: "In the cave of the 
heart have entered the two, the one is the 
eternal, absolute, real, perfect and self-efful- 
gent like the sun, and the other, the individual 
ego or soul, is like its reflection, or shadow, 
or image. The one is like the fountain-head 
of the blessed qualities and the infinite source 
of all divine powers, while the other contains the 

partial reflection of those qualities and powers.' ' 
206 



Divine Principle in Man. 

Thus according to Vedanta every individual 
soul, whether it be more or less animal in its 
thoughts and actions, possesses the Divine 
image and is no other than the image of the 
Divine Principle or Being. The Divine Being 
is one and universal but its reflections or 
images are many. As the image of the sun, 
falling upon the dull and unpolished surface 
of a piece of metal, does not properly reflect 
the grandeur and power of that self-luminous 
body, but appears dull and imperfect, so the 
Divine image, falling upon the dull surface 
of the animal nature cannot reflect all the 
blessed qualities, cannot manifest all the 
divine powers, but, on the contrary, appears 
animal in its tendencies and propensities. 
As the same image of the sun wall shine forth 
brighter and more effulgent when the sur- 
face of the metal is polished, so the individual 
soul will show its brighter and more effulgent 
aspect and will more fully reflect the divine 
qualities when the heart which contains the 

image is polished and made free from the dirt 
207 



Vedanta Philosbphy, 

of animal desires and animal tendencies; 
then and then alone, this same individual soul 
will begin to manifest all the blessed qualities 
like justice, mercy, kindness, and disinter- 
ested love for all humanity. These powers 
are latent in all individuals, but they will be 
expressed when the heart is purified. " Blessed 
are the pure in heart for they shall see God," 
said Jesus of Nazareth. 

The perfect manifestation of these divine 
powers depends entirely upon the removal of 
all obstructions like desire for earthly pleas- 
ures, for the enjoyments and comforts of 
earthly life, attachment to the gross physical 
body and to the senses, which force the indi- 
vidual soul to remain on the animal plane. 
Yet however animal the expression of the 
nature of an ordinary man of the world may 
be, his soul is still the image of the Divinity 
which holds potentially in its bosom all divine 
powers and all blessed qualities. Nay, even 
the souls of lower animals are potentially 

divine, according to Vedanta. The evolution 
208 



Divine Principle in Man. 

of nature is required to bring out these po- 
tential tendencies, powers and qualities into 
their actual or real manifestations. Climbing 
the ladder of the evolution of nature, each 
individual soul or germ of life expresses its 
latent powers, first through the limitations 
of the animal nature as animal tendencies 
and animal desires, and lastly as spiritual 
powers by rising above all limitations, by tran- 
scending the boundaries of the various circles 
of animal, moral and spiritual nature, and 
approaching the abode of the infinite Divine 
Principle. At that time the individual soul 
becomes absolutely free from the bondage of 
nature, enjoys the supreme Bliss which is 
divine, and manifests all the blessed qualities. 
In passing through these various stages the 
individual ego studies its own powers, gains 
experience and realizes all the powers that 
are lying dormant within the soul. 

Many people ask the question, " Why is it 
necessary for the individual soul to gain 

experience when it is potentially divine ?" 
209 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

The very fact that creation, or projection, 

means the manifestation of the potential 

energy as kinetic or as actual reality, forces 

the soul to objectify and project the dormant 

activities on to the plane of consciousness; 

otherwise how can the soul learn its own 

powers when they are on the subconscious 

plane? Take as illustration the deep sleep 

state: when all the sense-powers, such as the 

power of walking, moving, talking, and all the 

mental and intellectual functions become 

unmanifested, do we know in that state what 

powers we possess? No, certainly not. We 

can only know their existence when they are 

brought out on the conscious plane, when 

they are awakened. Is not this awakening 

of the dormant powers that lie buried on 

the subconscious plane, the same thing as 

the gaining of experience? 

If for a moment all the individual souls 

that exist in the universe should cease to 

manifest their dormant powers, instantly 

the relative existence of phenomenal activity 
210 



Divine Principle in Man. 

would vanish and the whole world would go 
back to its primordial, undifferentiated con- 
dition of nescience, which is almost similar 
to the unmanifested state of deep sleep when 
we do not dream. Therefore each individual 
soul is bound to gain experience after experi- 
ence in the process of this manifestation of its 
latent powers and potential energy. Having 
experienced the powers and actions of the 
animal nature with their results, the soul 
longs for higher manifestations, tries to rise 
above that plane, and after realizing the 
effects of the moral and spiritual nature, it 
reaches perfection. In this state the soul 
becomes absolutely happy and contented, 
and, transcending the limitations of sense- 
powers, self-love and selfishness, it mani- 
fests the blessed qualities in the actions of 
its every-day life. 

This idea was illustrated by an ancient 
sage in India thus: "Two birds of the most 
beautiful plumage dwell upon the tree of 

life, they are bound together by the tie of 
211 



Vedanta Philosophy, 

closest friendship. The one sits calm, serene, 
contented, peaceful and happy, and constantly 
watches the movements of his friend like a 
witness; while the other bird flies and hops 
from branch to branch, being attracted by 
the sight of the sweet and inviting fruits 
which the tree of life bears. When he is 
drawn toward a fruit, he tastes it and enjoys 
the sensation; then he tries another which 
appears more attractive, but unfortunately 
when he tastes it, he finds it extremely bitter 
and does not like it. (We must remember 
here that the tree of life is not like an ordinary 
tree; it bears all kinds of fruits from the sweet- 
est to the bitterest.) Having tried the various 
fruits according to his desires, the bird happens 
to come to one that is exceedingly bitter, and 
having tasted it, he suffers intensely, and 
unhappy and distressed, he remembers his 
friend, whom he had forgotten for the time 
being. He looks for him and at last finds 
him seated on the top of the tree, calm, peace- 
ful and perfectly contented. He envies his 
212 



Divine Principle in Man. 

peace, happiness and contentment and slowly 
approaches him. As he comes nearer and 
nearer, lo! he is forcibly drawn into the per- 
fect being of that witness-like friend, for he 
was his reflection or image." 

The bird which flies from branch to branch, 
which enjoys and suffers, is the individual 
ego or the living soul of man. The fruits of 
this tree of life are nothing but the results of 
all the good and bad acts which the ego per- 
forms; and the witness-like friend is the 
perfect Divine Being, whose image the indi- 
vidual soul is. Thus having experienced all 
the fruits of our good and bad deeds, when 
we become discontented and unhappy, we 
seek our true, eternal friend, admire him, 
aspire to attain to his peace and happiness, 
go nearer and nearer, and ultimately become 
one with him. It is then that we feel happy 
and contented, it is then that true peace and 
happiness come. 

As the image or reflection of the sun cannot 

exist for a second independent of that self- 
213 



Vedanta Philosophy. 

luminous heavenly body, so the individual 
soul, being the image of God, cannot exist 
even for a moment without depending upon 
the Divine Principle. The individual ego 
owes its life, its intelligence, its intellect, 
mind and all other mental and physical 
powers to that infinite source of all powers, 
all knowledge, all love, and everlasting happi- 
ness. In fact the individual soul does not 
possess anything. All these powers and forces 
that we are expressing in our daily life, whether 
animal, moral or spiritual, do not belong to 
us, but proceed from that one inexhaustible 
source. Nor is the Divine Principle far from 
us; He is the soul of our soul, the life of our 
life, and the omnipotent essence of our 
being. 

"The Divine Principle is smaller than the 
smallest and larger than the largest; it per- 
vades the infinite space and also dwells in 
the minutest atom of atoms; it resides in 
the innermost sanctuary of the soul of every 

man and woman; whosoever realizes that 
214 



Divine Principle in Man. 

omnipresent Divinity, whose image the indi- 
vidual soul is, unto him come eternal peace 
and perpetual bliss, unto none else, unto 

none else." 

215 



Publications of The Vedanta Society. 
The Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna. 

COMPILED BY 

SWAMI ABHEDANANDA. 

234 pages. Flexible cloth, gilt top, 75c. net. Postage, 4c. 

Ramakrishna was a great Hindu saint of the nineteenth century 
who has already had an influence on the religious thought of 
America and England through the teachings of his disciples, 
Swami Vivek&nanda, Sw&mi Abhed&nanda, and others. His Say- 
ings are full of broad, practical, non-sectarian instructions concern- 
ing the spiritual life which cannot but give help and inspiration 
to the followers of all creeds. The present volume contains a 
larger number of Sayings than has yet appeared in any one English 
collection. For the first time also they have been classified into 
chapters and arranged in logical sequence under marginal head- 
ings, such as "All creeds paths to God," "Power of Mind and 
Thought," "Meditation," "Perseverance." As an exposition of 
the universal truths of Religion and their application to the daily 
life this book takes its place among the great scriptures of the 
world. 



My Master. 

BY SWAMI VIVEKANANDA. 
l2mo, 90 pages. Cloth, 50 cents. Postage, 6 cents. 

*' This little book gives an account of the character and career of 
the remarkable man known in India as Paramahamsa Srimat 
Ramakrishna, who is regarded by a great number of his country- 
men as a divine incarnation. It is not more remarkable for the story 
it tells of a holy man than for the clear English in which it is told, 
and the expressions of elevated thought in its pages."— Journal, 
Indianapolis, May 13th, 1901. 

" The book, besides telling the life of Sri Ramakrishna, gives an 
insight into some of the religious ideas of the Hindus and sets 
forth the more important ideals that vitally influence India's teem- 
ing millions. If we are willing to sympathetically study the relig- 
ious views of our Aryan brethren of the Orient, we shall find them 
governed by spiritual concepts in no way inferior to the highest 
known to ourselves, concepts which were thought out and prac- 
tically applied by those ancient philosophers in ages so remote as 
to antedate history." — Post, Washington May 13th, 1901. 



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Publications of The Vedanta Society. 

WORKS BY SWAMI ABHEDANANDA. 



Spiritual Unfoldment. 

I. Self-control. 
II. Concentration and Meditation. 
III. God-consciousness. 

Paper, 25 cents. Cloth, 40 cents. Postage, 2 and 5 cents. 

" This attractive little volume comprises three lectures on the Vedanta 
Philosophy. The discourses will be found vitally helpful even by those 
who know little and care less about the spiritual and ethical teachings of 
which the Sw&mi is an able and popular exponent. As the Vedanta itself 
is largely a doctrine of universals and ultimates, so also is this book of 
common utility and significance among all races of believers. Its precepts 
are susceptible of application by any rational thinker, regardless of relig- 
ious predilection and inherited prejudices. The principles set forth by 
this teacher are an excellent corrective of spiritual bias or narrowness, and 
as such the present work is to be commended. It has already awakened 
an interest in Oriental literature that augurs well for the cause of human 
brotherhood, and it merits a wide circulation among all who cherish ad- 
vanced ideals." — Mind, April, igo2. 

Reincarnation. 

I. Reincarnation. 
II. Evolution and Reincarnation. 
III. Which is Scientific, Resurrection or Reincarn- 
carnation ? 

Paper, 25 cents. Cloth, 40 cents. Postage, 2 and 5 cents. 

" In these discourses the Swami Abhedananda considers the questions 
of evolution and the resurrection in their bearing upon the ancient teach- 
ing of rebirth, the truth, logic and justice of which are rapidly permeating 
the best thought of the Western world. For the preservation of this doc- 
trine mankind is indebted to the literary storehouses of India, the racial 
and geographical source of much of the vital knowledge of Occidental 
peoples. Reincarnation is shown in the present volume to be a universal 
solvent of life's mysteries. It answers those questions of children that 
have staggered the wisest minds who seek to reconcile the law of evolution 
and the existence of an intelligent and just Creator, with the proposition 
that man has but a single lifetime in which to develop spiritual self-con- 
sciousness. It is commended to every thinker." — Mind, February, igoo. 



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Philosophy of Work. 

I. Philosophy of Work. 
II. Secret of Work. 
III. Duty or Motive in Work. 

Paper, 35 cents. Cloth, 50 cents. Postage, 2 and 6 cents. 

11 In this volume the Vedanta Society presents three lectures by the 
leader of the Hindu religious movement that is making much head- 
way among philosophic minds throughout the United States. The 
book is an excellent antidote to the gospel of selfism now popular 
in many quarters, and a copy should be in the hands especially of 
every ambitious seeker after the loaves and fishes of material desire. 
It shows the folly of slavery to sense and the means of escape from 
the thraldom of egoism, while elucidating the Hindu concept of 
many things that are i race problems ' because of individual igno- 
rance of spiritual principles. These discourses merit a wide circula- 
tion among unprejudiced minds." — Mind, February, 1903. 



Single Lectures. 



j> 



p* 



The Way to the Blessed Life. 
Scientific Basis of Religion. 
Cosmic Evolution and its Purpose. 
The Philosophy of Good and Evil. 
Does the Soul Exist after Death? 
The Relation of Soul to God. 
The Word and the Cross in Ancient India. 
The Motherhood of God. 
Why a Hindu is a Vegetarian. 
Religion of the Hindus. 
Divine Communion. 
Who is the Saviour of Souls? 
Woman's Place in Hindu Religion. 
Why a Hindu accepts Christ and Rejects Churchianity. 
hristian Science and Vedanta. 

10 cents each. Postage, 1 cent each. 



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Publications of The Vedanta Society. 

RECENT WORK BY SWAMI ABHEDANANDA. 



How to be a Yogi. 



I. Introductory. III. Science of Breathing. 

II. What is Yoga ? IV. Was Christ a Yogi ? 

i2mo, 188 pages. Cloth, $1.00. Postage, 7 cents. 

"For Christians interested in foreign missions this book is of 
moment, as showing the method of reasoning which they must be 
prepared to meet if they are to influence the educated Hindu. To 
the Orientalist, and the philosopher also, the book is not without 
interest. . . . Swami Abhedanan da preaches no mushroom creed 
and no Eurasian hybrid ' theosophy.' He aims to give us a com- 
pendious account of Yoga. Clearly and admirably he performs his 
task. In form the little book is excellent, and its English style is 
good." — New York Times Saturday Review of Books , Dec. 6, 1902. 

" * How to be a Yogi ' is a little volume that makes very interest- 
ing reading. The book contains the directions that must be fol- 
lowed in physical as well as in mental training by one who wishes 
to have full and perfect control of all his powers." — Record- 
Herald, Chicago, Feb. 28, 1903. 

" The Sw&mi writes in a clear, direct manner. His chapter on 
Breath will elicit more than ordinary attention, as there is much in 
it that will prove helpful. The book makes a valuable addition to 
Vedanta Philosophy." — Mind, June, 1903. 

"The book is calculated to interest the student of Oriental 
thought and familiarize the unread with one of the greatest philo- 
sophical systems of the world." — Buffalo Courier, Nov. 23, 1902. 

11 ( How to be a Yogi ' practically sums up the whole science of 
Vedanta Philosophy. The term Yogi is lucidly defined and a full 
analysis is given of the science of breathing and its bearing on the 
highest spiritual development. The methods and practices of Yoga 
are interestingly set forth, and not the least important teaching of 
the book is the assertion of how great a Yogi was Jesus of Naz- 
areth." — The Bookseller \ Newsdealer and Stationer, Jan. 15, 1903. 

" This book is well worth a careful reading. Condensed, yet 
clear and concise, it fills one with the desire to emulate these Yogis 
in attaining spiritual perfection." — Unity, Kansas City, Dec, 1902. 



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Publications of The Vedanta Society. 

LAST WORK BY SWAMI VIVEKANANDA. 



Jnana Yoga. 

i2mo. 356 pages. Cloth, $1.50. Postage, 11 cents. 

"One of the great thought challengers of the day is this work 
by the Sw&mi Vivek&nanda. The book goes deep and treats of 
startling things, but when analyzed and viewed from the author's 
standpoint, they are found to be links in the great chain of truth. 
He alone will deny who is out of sympathy or limited in vision." — 
Transcript^ Boston, Sept. 24, 1902. 

44 Students of religion will find much of interest in it ; those who 
care for India in any way will be glad to receive an indication of 
high Hindu thought in one of the most striking religious move- 
ments of the day ; while the orthodox Christian will derive some 
information from the work regarding the attitude of cultured 
Hindus toward Christianity and its Founder. After reading the 
book one is inexcusable if his ideas concerning Vedanta are 
hazy." — New York Saturday Review of Books ■, July 12, 1902. 

44 The lectures show a wonderful insight into great truths which 
underlie all religious aspiration." — Courier-Journal, Louisville, 
July 5, 1902. 

44 The altruism with which his preaching is permeated attracts 
and inspires, The love of humanity which he inculcates harmonizes 
with the spirit of the age. His English is good, his style easy to 
read his sincerity unquestionable. Merely as an intelligent pre- 
sentation of what is best in the ancient Hindu Scriptures, the 
Swami Vivek&nanda's book is deserving of attention at the hands 
of religious students." — Record-Herald, Chicago, Aug. 19, 1902. 

44 The lectures are all extremely interesting, the style brilliant, 
the reasoning often subtle. Whether the philosophy advanced is 
satisfactory or not to those whose theories are the outgrowth of a 
different system of thought, his method of presenting it affords an 
intellectual pleasure."— -Journ al, Indianapolis, Oct. 13, 1902. 

44 It is a book which appeals to the intellectual, and no one could 
be the worse for reading it, since it contains much of truth even as 
Christians measure truth." — Milwaukee Sentinel, Aug. 15, 1902. 

44 The Vedanta Philosophy as explained by Vivek&nanda is 
interesting. ... As given by him and his followers, no more lofty 
teachings can be found. The work is a valuable addition to the 
literature of religions." — Toledo Blade, Oct. 11, 1902. 



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Works on The Vedanta Philosophy. 

BY SWAMI VIVEKANANDA. 



Raja Yoga. 



376 pages. Cloth, $1.50. Postage, 11 cents. Portrait of author, 
frontispiece. 



Besides lectures on Raja Yoga the book contains Patanjali's Yoga 
Aphorisms with Commentary, a copious Sanskrit Glossary, a lec- 
ture on Immortality, and the Sw&mi's lectures on Bhakti Yoga. 

" The whole spirit of the book is candid in the extreme. It 
appeals to what is best and noblest in man. It makes no foolish 
mysteries and demands no blind belief. It puts forth its system in 
a plain and simple manner. It is able to present its own method 
without in any way attacking the method of others. It manifests 
a charity that it is usual to call Christian, but which Vivekinanda 
proves is equally the property of the Hindu. If this little book 
had nothing to teach but the beautiful toleration it advocates, it 
would be well worth reading; but many will find in it valuable 
suggestions to aid in reaching the higher life." — Arena , March, 1897. 

"A large part of the book is occupied with that method of 
attaining perfection known as Raja Yoja, and there are also trans- 
lations of a number of aphorisms and an excellent glossary." — 
Living Age, August 5th, 1899. 

" A valuable portion of the volume to students is the glossary of 
Sanskrit technical terms. This includes not only such terms as are 
employed in the book, but also those frequently employed in works 
on the Vedanta philosophy in general." — New York Times, July 
22nd, 1899. 

" A new edition with enlarged glossary, which will be welcomed 
by students of comparative religion, who are already familiar with 
the author's lectures in this country." — Review of Reviews, Oct., 
1899. 

11 The methods of practical realization of the divine within the 
human are applicable to all religions, and all peoples, and only 
vary in their details to suit the idiosyncrasy of race and individ- 
uals." — Post, Washington, D. C, June 12th, 1899. 



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Works on The Vedanta Philosophy. 
BY swAmi vivekananda. 



Karma Yoga 



i2mo. New and revised edition. Cloth, $1.00. Postage, 7 cents. 
Portrait of author, frontispiece. 

Eight lectures on the practical application of the Vedanta Phi- 
losophy to the affairs of daily life, showing in a clear and forcible 
manner how it is possible to lead the highest life without abandon- 
ing the duties and avocations of one's station in the world, and 
proving conclusively that the loftiest aspiration and attainment are 
entirely compatible with the humblest occupation, and are open to 
every human being. 



The Vedanta Philosophy. 

An Address before the Graduate Philosophical Society of 
Harvard College, with Introduction by Prof. C. C. 
Everett. 15 cents. Postage, 2 cents. 

The Ideal of a.Universal Religion. 

The Cosmos. 

The Atman. 

The Real and Apparent Man. 

Bhakti Yoga. 

World's Fair Addresses. 

10 cents each. Postage, I cent each. 



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JUN 13 1903 



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